By most accounts, the cloud is expected to blossom into a $100 billion-plus industry in the immediate future, and continue to climb as more individuals and enterprises shift their data hosting and analytics needs offsite. Not surprisingly, tech behemoths like IBM (NYSE:IBM)recognize the opportunity the cloud offers, and have slowly but surely started shifting resources to ride the cloud train.

Of course, IBM is hardly alone in offering a bevy of cloud solutions. With so much potential revenue at stake, folks like Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) via its Amazon Web Services (AWS) unit — recognized as one of the industry’s first providers — and fast-growing Microsoft(NASDAQ:MSFT) are betting big on the cloud. But market share aside, which of the cloud leaders actually offers the best-performing solution? According to a recent, independent study, Amazon.com and Microsoft both take backseats to IBM. Details