Enterprise giants Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and Microsoft have been recognized as the undisputed leaders in the cloud storage space by Gartner Inc.’s analysts.

Last week, Gartner rolled out its latest Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Storage Services, Worldwide, acknowledging just seven vendors it considers worthwhile bothering with. They are the leaders AWS, Google and Microsoft, with AT&T Inc., IBM, Rackspace Inc., and Verizon Wireless bringing up the rear as ‘pretenders’ occupying niche roles in the market.

What’s unusual for Gartner is that this particular report found no suitable vendors to occupy the “visionaries” or “challengers” quadrant.

As far as the “leaders” go, AWS came out in first place, being lauded for the wide range of offerings it has. Even so, it did come in for some criticism, mostly due to its complex pricing structure, but also because of the admission of a common API for S3 and Glacier. Gartner also said that AWS is “struggling to balance customer expectations of a high degree of expertise with capabilities delivered as industrialized services at competitive costs”, yet nevertheless it came out on top.

Microsoft Azure landed in second place with a somewhat mixed review. Among its advantages, Gartner said it makes hybrid storage easy with its StorSimple applicances. It also added that Microsoft “simplies vendor engagement for organizations unable or unwilling to handle complex vendor relationships”. However there was criticism too, for Gartner notes StorSimple is block-only, which means those customers who want more may need to use multiple vendors, which will surely be an annoying and unnecessary complication for some. Gartner also criticised Microsoft for its limited integration of data environments, due to the lack of links between Azure Storage, Office 365 and OneDrive.

As for Google, it’s position as a leader comes from its excellent price competitiveness and content delivery network. However, Gartner expressed concern that Google can’t step up to applications like disaster recovery and is unable to make its presence felt in highly-regulated industries like government.

The pretenders came in for similar critical treatment. Gartner gave Verizon the thumbs up for its S3 compatibility, suitability for media distribution and links to other services, but warns that its services are still extremely nascent and as such, it may not be the most reliable bet. IBM is described as a solid performer that has numerous data center facilities but Gartner worries about their size. Big Blue’s “infrastructure scale … is modest when compared to its key competitors, which may be a constraint for some customers that require massive bursts in scalability in an on-demand manner,” Gartner’s analysts say.

AT&T won applause for its alliance with EMC and its wealth of connectivity options, but the main drawbacks are a lack of block and file services that make it irrelevant for many users. Finally there’s Rackspace, which has built its cloud on OpenStack. Gartner notes that open-source project is slowly picking up steam, but says its concerned about a lack of innovation as the company’s Cloud Files service hasn’t seen many worthwhile updates recently.

Overall, the cloud storage market is indicative of the wider cloud computing arena, with the “hyperscale vendors” AWS, Google and Microsoft expanding their grip and forcing the smaller players to focus on niche markets. But even so, companies should be wary of going all-in with cloud storage, because long-standing issues of latency, bandwidth limitations and the lack of physical control and access to storage infrastructure have yet to be overcome.

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