Last week saw the competition in the public cloud reach another new height after Baidu Inc. rolled out three separate sets of developer tools for its infrastructure-as-a-service platform. The additions target the media processing, analytics and connected device management use cases that better-established rivals like Amazon Inc. have been focusing on lately.

The update puts Baidu on much more even footing as far as functionality is concerned, but it still has a long way to go before it can directly challenge its Western competitors in the global marketplace. International companies are unlikely to choose the Chinese search provider’s platform when there are much more proven alternatives out there. As a result, the firm will probably focus its efforts on East Asia at first before trying to expand into other regions where the competition is already entrenched. That leaves more room for Amazon to grow.

Jeff Bezos’ firm is continuously developing new features for its public cloud a bid to stay on top of the market. Last week, the effort led it to acquire a startup called Cloud9 IDE Inc. that has created a managed code editor for writing web and mobile apps. Amazon presumably plans to integrate the software into its public cloud to remove users’ dependence on third party development tools. Such an offering would also open a new front against Microsoft Corp., one of its top rivals in the infrastructure-as-a-service market, which has a large application development business.

The acquisition of Cloud9 IDE was announced on the same day that Atlassian Inc. gobbled up StatusPage Inc. in a similar deal. As its name amplifies, the latter outfit offers a service that lets companies share maintenance information with users when their websites become unavailable. It has racked up thousands of customers since hitting the market in 2013, including Citrix Systems Inc., Box Inc. and numerous other major tech firms.

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