Probably the most obvious and biggest competitor of Crowd Machine is Microsoft Azure. However, Microsoft Azure only supports a few blockchain applications and development of decentralized blockchain apps is fairly limited.
As a Microsoft support agent, I have managed to get six months trial for Microsoft Azure with 25 USD balance each month. Although, it was interesting to play with it and deploy different complicated services in a few clicks, I have to admit that this service is more suited for medium and big businesses. The prices are quite high for an average start-up on a budget (varies from services to service, but on average is still pretty high). They have additional paid support to help your company move to Azure, but that's not really intended for private developers (At least that's how it seemed to me). It is a good service, but if we are talking about development of decentralized apps on a blockchain then Crowd Machine has a huge advantage here.
Second big competitor, in my opinion, will be AWS. Prices for some services and computing power can be a bit lower in comparison to Microsoft Azure, but less computing power will cost more in AWS. Again, we can deduct that Amazon Web Services is also enterprise-oriented and not intended for private developers (or small ambitious start-ups).
Of course, anyone can use MS Azure or AWS to deploy their project, but for certain tasks and especially for development of blockchain apps Crowd Machine will be a better pick. My guess will be, that due to peer-to-peer network of Crowd Virtual Machines (CVM), which can run on any device including mobile, desktop, IoT device or data center, Crowd Machine will be able to offer lower prices. Providers of computing power will be rewarded, which motivates contribution from private parties and insures decentralization of the platform.
Crowd Machine will have a Crowd Share repository. Anyone will be able to upload their own code in that repository and every time that code is consumed and executed, member who contributed the code will be rewarded. (Similar to Github, only with rewards.)
In 2017 "Public Cloud Service" market was valued at $246B and the "Enterprise Software" market was valued at $392B (Figure below). Crowd Machine can simultaneously address those markets.
Creators of this platform state that "Crowd Machine will accelerate the adoption of blockchain networks and the creation of decentralized apps" and I do agree with them on this one. After all in modern world everything is striving towards optimization (Achieve more with less effort, ideally in less time). And this project is an excellent example of development problem optimization. Where people with ideas, skills and investments can collaborate and deploy blockchain projects or applications even without deep expertise in this field.
Crowd Machine is a helpful cloud,
It will help you create your own Dapp now.
Don't miss out on this great opportunity
May Your apps achieve consensus and unity!
Article for @OriginalWorks contest
crowd2018
