@tommoor is making reference to Google and Microsoft releasing open source versions of their deep learning toolkits. Interesting that Google did not release a distributed version but Microsoft did.
As this stuff is more accessible, more people play with it, and perhaps more interesting learning apps emerge from that additional use. Hence, birth of the machines.
Microsoft has been pushing really hard to make Azure a contender. And they're right to do so, AWS is in a somewhat shakey position. They're moving people over to VPCs but haven't integrated their VPCs with their cloud services in a robust way, forcing the burden onto customers.
Anecdotally, friends of mine in the know tell me that it's been a good year for GCE. I wonder if Azure is seeing an uptick as well.