Underneath that magic quadrant graph that Gartner publish each year is a scoring system, x and y features are worth 1 point, w and z features are worth 3 points, etc. etc. Typically that's based on what other clouds are already doing, but in some places they attempt to push features that way based on what their market research indicates customers want.

Clouds know what they'll be evaluated on about a year before they're evaluated, so they know what features they need to build during the year. Evaluation time is coming up for clouds, so you should expect to see a bunch of features announced over the next few months :)