Here are 19 of the most important executives leading Microsoft's cloud business as it takes on Amazon Web Services (MSFT)

Microsoft; Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

• We've identified 19 of the high-powered executives that Microsoft has assembled in a team to fight its rivals in the cloud wars, based on information from insiders and experts.
• Microsoft has long been considered the No. 2 cloud provider versus dominant Amazon Web Services, but that perception has started to change through recent and significant victories, such as landing a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon.
• Experts say that contract puts Microsoft's Azure cloud computing business in the same league as AWS — whether Amazon likes it or not.
• Of course, Microsoft still has a lot of catching up to do. Gartner estimated Amazon's 2018 cloud market share was three times the size of Microsoft's.
• Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

Microsoft's cloud business is on the rise and the Redmond, Washington-based company has assembled a team of high-powered executives to upend its rivals.

Microsoft Azure has long been considered the No. 2 cloud provider versus dominant Amazon Web Services, but that perception has started to change.

"Azure is the primary growth engine for the company and positions them to have a leading marketshare in a potentially multitrillion-dollar opportunity in the future of computing," RBC Capital analyst Alex Zukin said. 

To be sure, Microsoft still has a lot of catching up to do. Gartner in a report released over the summer pegged the 2018 market share for AWS at 47.8% and that of Microsoft Azure at 15.5%. But Microsoft has scored some significant wins and recent moves indicate the company is prioritizing the cloud above all else.

Perhaps most significant is the company's recent win of a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon. AWS was considered the frontrunner but experts say the win puts Microsoft in the same league as the AWS.

"It signals to the market Microsoft is no longer a runner-up and can be viewed as a leader in the category where they can surpass AWS in certain areas," Zukin said.

To lead that charge, Microsoft has assembled a team of high-powered executives to guide its all-important cloud strategy. We spoke with insiders and experts who said that these were the 19 power players to watch within Microsoft's cloud business.

Meet Microsoft's ace cloud team:

Johnson oversees Microsoft's strategies for cybersecurity and compliance solutions across marketing, engineering, and product teams.

She's an expert in cyber resilience, online fraud, cyberattacks, compliance, and mobile security, and "has built and shaped one of the company's highest performing teams whose digital transformation expertise leverages built-in cloud security capabilities," according to her bio on Microsoft's website. 

Johnson started at Microsoft in 2015 as general manager of the company's enterprise cybersecurity group and has been in her current position since 2018.

Shah's job is to make the Azure cloud platform secure.

He's spent more than 30 years at Microsoft, including a decade in the cloud computing business, and now runs services that help cloud customers protect against security threats including Azure Security Center, Azure Sentinel, and Azure Key Vault.

Shah also leads security product development teams for user and infrastructure-oriented security and runs the Microsoft Security Response Center, which responds to attacks against Microsoft's cloud, as well as the data center security team, which protects the physical security of Microsoft data centers.

Lamanna leads the engineering and program management teams for the business applications group's Low Code Application Platform, which includes products such as Microsoft's Dynamics 365 customers relationship management platform and PowerApps, which helps companies create business apps without coding.

Offering products that require little or no coding — part of the so-called low-code/no-code movement in the developer tech market — has become a priority for Microsoft.

"Microsoft has a very big commitment not just to true software developers, but citizen developers [or non-professional developers," Daniel Newman, Futurum Research principal analyst and founding partner, said. "They're trying to drive low-code, no-code adoption where you can do it all without needing to be an experienced coder." 

Lamanna's team includes nearly 1,000 people in Redmond, Hyderabad, Paris, and Toronto.

Yarkoni's job is to attract customers and partners including developers, enterprises, and independent software vendors into Microsoft's cloud business.

Her team is responsible for the Microsoft Scale-Ups program, which provides sales, marketing, and technical support for Series A startups, and Microsoft's Imagine Cup student competition. 

Yarkoni also runs Microsoft's Channel 9, which publishes videos behind-the-scenes at Microsoft, and learning resources and forums such as developer.microsoft.com and doc.microsoft.com, making her a visible part of the company's all-important push to appeal to developers.

Sanders sets the sales strategy and runs the corporate technical sales team for Microsoft's Azure cloud business, its productivity apps, and Dynamics 365, its competitor to Salesforce. 

Sanders joined Microsoft in 2004 and has worked on the Azure team since before its release.

"I find Corey Sanders as one of the well-trusted names in the space," Gartner research director Sanjeev Mohan said.

See Also:

• An unsealed court filing gives the first peek at Amazon's legal attack on the Pentagon's $10 billion cloud contract, and Trump is called out by name
• A Wall Street analyst says Oracle's business will take a hit from the cloud trend 'even in optimistic scenarios'
• Amazon kicked off its cloud conference by blasting Microsoft for being anti-customer, 2 months after Microsoft won the Pentagon's $10 billion contract

SEE ALSO: Amazon reportedly restricted partners at its New York conference from mentioning competitors like Microsoft and Google