With Azure, Microsoft is one of very few cloud vendors that runs at hyper-scale.

Judged as of July 2014. True if evidence from around that time (analyst reports such as Gartner's IaaS Magic Quadrant, or industry coverage of cloud data-centre scale) shows that Microsoft Azure was one of a small group of cloud providers, roughly a handful such as AWS, Google and Microsoft, that operated global data-centre infrastructure at hyper-scale. Mostly true if Azure was widely seen as hyper-scale but the group was somewhat larger than 'very few' (for example, it also included several other providers commonly described as hyper-scale). Mixed if sources disagree on whether Azure was hyper-scale at that time. Mostly false if Azure was large but was generally described as clearly below hyper-scale peers, or if many vendors ran at comparable scale, so that 'very few' badly overstates the case. False if Azure did not run at hyper-scale in 2014.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Microsoft Positions Azure as the Hyper-Scale Cloud To Beat -- Redmond Channel Partner Redmond Channel Partner (RCPmag) · 1 September 2014

   “Ultimately, we think there's going to be three large hyper-scale providers out there in the world that are going to be able to achieve this type of scale footprint: basically us -- Microsoft -- Amazon and Google.”

2. E2 Amazon and Microsoft top Gartner's IaaS Magic Quadrant - ZDNET ZDNet · 3 June 2014

   “While Azure is still a distant second to AWS in terms of market share, it is far ahead of its other competitors.”

3. E3 Here's What You Need To Know From Microsoft's Cloud Event | TechCrunch TechCrunch · 20 October 2014

   “However, noting that two other companies also have the scale in place to be true, “hyper-scale” cloud players, Microsoft doesn’t appear ready to give itself a crown.”

4. E4 Fact check: Microsoft executive says Amazon is just half a competitor in the ‘hyper-scale’ cloud GeekWire · 11 December 2014

   “you really have about two-and-a-half companies in all of technology from a multi-national standpoint that have hyper-scale cloud.”

The evidence that Azure ran at hyper-scale and that only a few providers did comes from Microsoft's own statements as reported in the press [E1][E3][E4]. The one independent assessment [E2] covers market share only, not data-centre scale. Once the unsupported detail about other providers in Gartner's report is removed, nothing in the evidence shows how large the hyper-scale group was, so the evidence does not settle the claim under the criteria.