Google Inc.’s efforts to establish itself as a major player in cloud computing received a small boost Wednesday when it was named by research firm Forrester Research Inc. as the undisputed leader in a part of the market Forrester calls “Insight Platform as a Service.”

It should be noted that Insight PaaS is just a small subsection of the overall PaaS market, so Google still has some way to go. Forrester defines the Insight PaaS category as an integrated set of data management, analytics and insight application development and management components, offered as a platform. PaaS more generally is the middle layer of cloud computing, customarily defined as services to allow software developers to create applications that run on the Internet.

In its report, Forrester also laid out the benefits Insight PaaS platforms provide to organizations. These include being able to manage and access large and complex data sets more easily, update and evolve applications that deliver insight at the moment of action, update existing technology and integrate and coordinate team member activities.

Google was singled out as the leader in the category thanks to its “comprehensive set of analytics and machine learning tools designed to fit the needs of every business,” Forrester said.

The analyst firm said it identified three different kinds of technology providers that meet its definition of Insight PaaS: cloud giants such as Google, Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure; big data companies including Databricks Inc. and Qubole Inc. that offer a set of managed services, machine learning libraries and developer tools via the cloud; and business intelligence firms such as 1010data and GoodData Corp. that are moving into advanced analytics and application development.

These providers were then ranked according to the strength of their current Insight PaaS offerings, their strategy and vision, and their overall market presence.

Google is the clear winner here. Forrester said that’s thanks to the strength of the company’s PaaS strategy, plus its tools for batch and real-time solutions, as well as its machine learning and Artificial Intelligence products. These tools include its App Engine and BigQuery PaaS components, plus its cloud-based Hadoop and Spark services. Forrester also highlighted Google as being the only company to offer what it calls “insight execution” features such as machine learning automation.

It wasn’t all praise for Google, however, as Forrester criticized it for the complexity of its Insight PaaS service portfolio. It also highlighted the immaturity of its real-time and business analytics tools, and said that its complex billing process often drives customers “crazy.”

More surprising than Google’s leadership, perhaps, is that Forrester ranks IBM Corp. as No. 2 in the category. This will be welcome news for IBM because its cloud and AI offerings have come in for quite a bit of criticism lately, but Forrester was full of praise for its Spark-based Watson Data Platform in particular. It also said IBM’s Insight PaaS solutions should improve in future thanks to its partnership with Hortonworks Inc.

Another surprise was GoodData, which ranks above the likes of AWS and Azure thanks to its “excellent structured data management and analytics tools,” which are further supplemented by machine learning algorithms. Databricks was the third company to be listed as a “strong performer” based on the strength of its Unified Analytics Platform, a comprehensive set of machine learning and visualization libraries and its support for a wide range of data analytics development languages.

As for AWS and Microsoft, it’s clear they have some way to go. The two public cloud leaders find themselves in the somewhat unusual position of being ranked as mere “contenders.”

The main reason is that AWS’s Insight PaaS offerings were said to lack unifying services such as metadata management and data governance, while the complexity of its tools means that many users will find it “overwhelming,” Forrester said. As for Microsoft, Forrester said it was encouraged by its machine learning chops and its addition of new services like Azure Data Lake and Azure Cloud Functions. However, this doesn’t make up for the fact that its services can be “confusing and somewhat redundant” and that more progress is needed to unify its metadata management and data governance products.

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