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"page_snippet": "Cloud computing in 2021 became the de facto choice of IT due to digital transformation shifts accelerated by remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's a look at how the cloud leaders stack up, the hybrid market, and the key SaaS players.Cloud computing in 2021 has become the go-to model for information technology as companies prioritize as-a-service providers over traditional vendors, accelerate digital transformation projects, and enable the new normal of work following the COVID-19 pandemic. The game is about data acquisition. The more corporate data that resides in a cloud the more sticky the customer is to the vendor. It's no secret that cloud computing vendors are pitching enterprises on using their platforms to house data for everything from analytics to personalized experiences. AWS was the first to offer cloud computing infrastructure as a service in 2008 and has never looked back. It's launching new services at a breakneck pace and is creating its own compute stack that aims to be more efficient and pass those savings along. That plan isn't likely to change as Adam Selipsky returns to become CEO of AWS as Andy Jassy takes over Amazon for Jeff Bezos. Artificial intelligence, analytics, IoT, and edge computing will be differentiators among the top cloud service providers -- as will serverless and managed services.",
"page_result": "\n\n \n \n Top cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, hybrid, SaaS players | ZDNET\n \n \n
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\n Top cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, hybrid, SaaS players\n
\n Cloud computing in 2021 became the de facto choice of IT due to digital transformation shifts accelerated by remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's a look at how the cloud leaders stack up, the hybrid market, and the key SaaS players.\n
Cloud computing in 2021 has become the go-to model for information technology as companies prioritize as-a-service providers over traditional vendors, accelerate digital transformation projects, and enable the new normal of work following the COVID-19 pandemic.
And while enterprises are deploying more multicloud arrangements the IT budgets are increasingly going to cloud giants. According to a recent survey from Flexera on IT budgets for 2021, money is flowing toward Microsoft Azure and its software-as-service offerings as well as Amazon Web Services. Google Cloud Platform is also garnering interest for big data and analytics workloads. But hybrid cloud and traditional data center vendors such as IBM, Dell Technologies, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and VMware have a role too.
Meanwhile, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe, and Workday are battling SAP and Oracle for more wallet and corporate data share. Salesforce and ServiceNow launched successful back-to-work enablement suites and cemented positions as major platforms.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the move to remote work and video conferencing are accelerating moves to the cloud. Enterprises increasingly are seeing the cloud as a digital transformation engine as well as a technology that improves business continuity. As work was forced to go remote due to stay-at-home orders, tasks were largely done on cloud infrastructure. Collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams and Google Meet became cogs in the companies' broader cloud ecosystem. Zoom not only lands subscription revenue, but also runs on cloud providers such as AWS and Oracle.
The game is about data acquisition. The more corporate data that resides in a cloud the more sticky the customer is to the vendor. It's no secret that cloud computing vendors are pitching enterprises on using their platforms to house data for everything from analytics to personalized experiences.
Every flavor of cloud vendor wants to be a management layer to manage your other clouds. Public cloud vendors such as Google Cloud Platform and AWS have offerings to manage various cloud services. Traditional enterprise vendors such as Dell and HPE do too. Which platform becomes that "single pane of glass" for cloud management will be positioned well.
There's a sales war happening by industry. Cloud providers are going vertical to corner industries. Gartner's Magic Quadrant report on public cloud providers noted that the "capability gap between hyperscale cloud providers has begun to narrow; however, fierce competition for enterprise workloads extends to secondary markets worldwide." Indeed, the financials from AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have all been strong.
Gartner
With that backdrop, let's get to the 2020 top cloud computing vendors.
AWS was the first to offer cloud computing infrastructure as a service in 2008 and has never looked back. It's launching new services at a breakneck pace and is creating its own compute stack that aims to be more efficient and pass those savings along. That plan isn't likely to change as Adam Selipsky returns to become CEO of AWS as Andy Jassy takes over Amazon for Jeff Bezos.
While 2020 will be the year known for Amazon's ability to deliver goods during COVID-19 lockdowns, it's still worth noting that AWS delivers the most operating income in the company.
The biggest question is whether enterprises are going to worry about AWS' dominance as a digital transformation enabler. For now, AWS is becoming everything from a key AI and machine learning platform to call center engine to edge compute enabler.
Microsoft Azure, along with Microsoft's software-as-a-service effort and its footprint in enterprises, make the company a strong No. 2 to AWS. As enterprises pick preferred cloud vendors, Microsoft will be an option.
The cheap and easy storyline is that Microsoft Azure and AWS are on a collision course to be the top cloud service provider. The reality is that the two foes barely rhyme.
Commercial cloud is a roll-up of multiple services from Microsoft. Enterprises are likely to buy a buffet that includes Azure but isn't totally focused on it. That said, Microsoft commercial cloud annual revenue run rate is closing in on $70 billion.
Microsoft Azure benefits from its software-as-a-service footprint. The reality is that we could easily take Microsoft out of the IaaS category and put it in the SaaS section since most of the revenue is derived from Office 365, Dynamics, and a bevy of other cloud services that are software-based over infrastructure.
Nevertheless, Azure and its AI, machine learning, and history in the enterprise make it a formidable player. Azure has edge computing efforts.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella argued that the company's cloud unit sits in the middle of digital transformation efforts. "We have seen two years' worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and to sales and customer service to critical cloud infrastructure and security, we are working alongside customers every day to help them stay open for business in a world of remote everything," said Nadella.
To understand Azure's competitive advantage, it helps to know some history courtesy of ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley:
In the end, the Microsoft Azure battle with AWS will boil down to a sales war and thousands of foot soldiers pitching enterprises. You may become a Microsoft cloud customer via Teams, Office 365, Dynamics, Azure, or some combination of them all. The reality is that you'll have both top cloud service providers in your company and neither one will own the whole stack. Multi-cloud efforts will begin with having Microsoft and AWS in your company. The wallet-share trench war begins there. (See: Can AWS be caught? Here's how its cloud computing rivals can improve their chances)
Google Cloud Platform and its Anthos platform is working to break into digital transformation budgets. Meanwhile, the cloud provider is looking at expanding in its key verticals such as retail and financial services.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said COVID-19 was an inflection point for digital shifts. "Ultimately, we'll see a long-term acceleration of movement from businesses to digital services, including increased online work, education, medicine, shopping, and entertainment. These changes will be significant and lasting," he said.
Meanwhile, Google Cloud Platform has been building out partnerships with key enterprise players such as Salesforce, Informatica, VMware, and SAP. The company is also combining its G Suite and Google Cloud sales efforts.
A recent hire is Hamidou Dia as Google Cloud's vice president of solutions engineering. Hamidou was most recently Oracle's chief of sales consulting, consulting, enterprise architecture, and customer success. Google Cloud also named John Jester vice president of customer experience. Jester will lead a services team focused on architecture and best practices. Jester was most recently corporate vice president of worldwide customer success at Microsoft.
Alibaba has scaled rapidly with a bevy of enterprise partners. What remains to be seen is whether Alibaba can expand beyond China. In either case, Alibaba has a lot of runway ahead.
While Alibaba Cloud flies under the radar for customers that are primarily focused on the EU and US, companies operating in China may use it as a preferred cloud vendor. To that end, Alibaba Cloud is forging alliances with key enterprise vendors and is seen as a leading cloud service provider in Asia.
The catch with Alibaba Cloud is that US-based customers are likely to run into politics, data concerns, and trade wars, but it's quite possible that Alibaba Cloud can jump the rankings based on revenue just because the Chinese cloud market will be massive.
Hybrid/multi-cloud
With the battle between the hyperscale cloud vendors underway, you'd think that the legacy infrastructure players would recede to the background. Instead, the likes of IBM, Dell Technologies, and HPE aim to become the glue between multicloud deployments that feature a blend of private and public clouds as well as owned data centers. After all, most enterprises are looking at a multicloud strategy.
The two multicloud enablers in this mix are open source pioneer Red Hat, owned by IBM, and VMware, which is owned by Dell Technologies. Toss in Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, and Cisco Systems for solving select issues and you have a vibrant hybrid and multi-cloud space to consider. Here's a look at the key players that aim to be the point guards of the public cloud and how they'll connect to the hyperscale providers.
CEO Arvind Krishna has said IBM's big bets revolve around hybrid cloud, automation and AI. He has also said that the spin-off of the managed infrastructure unit will give IBM more focus.
I want IBM-ers to lead with a more technical approach. I want our teams to showcase the value of our solutions as early as possible. Likewise, there must be a relentless focus on quality. Our products must speak for themselves in terms of user experience, design and ease of use. My approach is straightforward: I am going to focus on growing the value of the company. This includes better aligning our portfolio around hybrid cloud and AI to meet the evolving needs of the market. \t
One key item to watch is how IBM blends its cloud and hybrid approach with emerging technologies. Consider:
VMware has an incumbent position, key partnership with AWS, and a parent in Dell Technologies that is using the cloud management platform to power its own platform. VMware has a knack for evolving as the cloud ecosystem shifts. For instance, VMware was focused primarily on virtualization and has fully adopted containers. VMware powers legacy enterprise data centers, but has extended to being the connector to public cloud providers after being a leader in private cloud deployments. In addition to its lucrative AWS partnership, VMware also has partnerships with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. And for good measure, VMware has integrated system partnerships with multiple hardware vendors.
So, where does Dell Technologies fit? Like IBM and Red Hat, Dell Technologies is looking to VMware as the software glue to give it a cloud platform that can span internal and public resources. VMware is the linchpin to the Dell Technologies' cloud effort.
Dell Technologies' long-game for the hybrid cloud revolves around a leadership position in integrated and converged systems, a vast footprint in servers, networking, and storage, and VMware's ability to bridge clouds. Dell Technologies is also aiming to deliver everything as a service.
At Dell Technologies World conference in Las Vegas, the company outlined a hybrid cloud strategy that aims to knit its data center and hybrid cloud technologies with public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and IBM Cloud with more to come. The effort is dubbed the Dell Technologies Cloud. VMware is also launching VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, which will include vSphere, vSAN, and NSX running on Dell EMC's infrastructure.
In addition, Dell Technologies is launching a data-center-as-a-service effort where it manages infrastructure in a model that lines up with cloud computing one-year and three-year deals. VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is also designed for companies running their own data centers, but want a cloud operating model. Dell Technologies data center as a service effort is built on a VMWare concept highlighted last year called Project Dimension.
Enterprises are likely to be either in the Red Hat or the VMware camp, and both companies have big parents that have the scale into private clouds and hybrid data centers.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise's hybrid cloud strategy revolves around its stack of hardware -- servers, edge compute devices via Aruba, storage and networking gear -- and its various software platforms such as Greenlake, SimpliVity, and Synergy. HPE prefers the term "hybrid IT" over multicloud, but its approach rhymes with what IBM and Dell Technologies are trying to do. The catch is that HPE doesn't have the scale that Red Hat and VMware have.
We want to be known as the edge-to-cloud platform as-a-service company. And in that there are three major components. One is, as-a- service because obviously customers want to consume their solutions in a more consumption driven, pay only for what you consume. And that experience, at the core is simplicity and automation for all the apps and data, wherever they live. \t \t
Obviously, the edge is the next frontier. And we said two years ago that the enterprise of the future will be edge-centric, cloud-enabled and data-driven. Well, guess what? The future is here now. The edge is where we live and work. \t \t
Where HPE's approach to hybrid deployments is differentiated is in its Aruba unit, which provides edge computing platforms. HPE aims to extend its cloud platform to edge networks. That cloud-to-edge approach could pay off in the future, but edge computing is still a developing market. In the meantime, HPE is tapping into Azure for management talent.
HPE
Keith White, a former Microsoft executive, will lead HPE's Greenlake business, which aims to help transform the company into an as-a-service juggernaut.
Cisco has partnerships with Azure and AWS and has expanded a relationship with Google Cloud. Add in AppDynamics, which specializes in application and container management, and Cisco has the various parts to address hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. In addition, Cisco is a key hyper-converged infrastructure player and its servers and networking gear are staples in data centers.
Software as a service is expected to be the largest revenue slice of the cloud pie. According to Gartner, SaaS revenue in 2020 is expected to be $166 billion compared to $61.3 billion for IaaS.
For large enterprises, there are a few realities. For starters, you're likely to have Salesforce in your company. You'll probably have Oracle and SAP, too. And then there may be a dose of Workday as well as Adobe. We'll focus on those five big vendors and their prospects. It's also worth noting that some of the previous vendors mentioned are primarily SaaS vendors. Microsoft Dynamics and Office are two software products likely to be delivered as a service. Your roster of software providers is as diverse as ever.
Here's a look at the leading cloud software vendors.
Salesforce's ambitions are pretty clear. The company wants to enable its customers to utilize its data to provide personal experiences, sell you its portfolio of clouds, and put its Salesforce Customer 360 effort in the center of the tech world. In 2020, Salesforce expanded its reach with Work.com, a suite to enable workers to head back to the office during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Salesforce executives have outlined the road to doubling revenue in fiscal 2025. Indeed, Salesforce has acquired or built out what could be an entire enterprise stack as it pertains to customer data. Its acquisition of Tableau may also be transformative since the analytics company has a broader footprint and gives Salesforce another way to reach the broader market.
What remains to be seen is whether Salesforce's Customer 360 platform can bring all of its clouds together in a way that prods enterprises to buy the entire portfolio in a SaaS buffet. At its analyst meeting, Salesforce noted that it had one customer in its top 25 with five clouds from the company, no customer with six, and a handful with three or four clouds. Slack will also bring more customers and reach to Salesforce.
Salesforce will need its top customers to adopt more clouds if the company is going to get to its $35 billion revenue target in fiscal 2025.
Salesforce's current lineup consists of clouds for integration, commerce, analytics, marketing, service platform, and sales. Service and sales clouds are the most mature, but others are growing quickly. Salesforce's Einstein is an example of AI functionality that's an upsell to its clouds. In the end, Salesforce sees a $168 billion total addressable market. Work.com could add more to that tally.
Oracle does infrastructure. Oracle does platform. Oracle does database, which is increasingly autonomous. Despite its IaaS and PaaS footprint, Oracle is mostly a software provider when it comes to cloud. With the addition of NetSuite, the company can cover small, mid-sized, and large enterprises.
Edward Screven, Oracle's chief corporate architect, said in an interview that the company is expanding its hyperscale reach for IaaS and plans to hit 36 facilities by the end of the year. While SaaS is core, Oracle is also landing new users with infrastructure and a free tier. "A lot of conversations we have are about SaaS, but enterprises need to build SaaS using the tools we have so they look at the platform. And everyone is looking for a fast, reliable and cost-effective compute," said Screven.
In other words, IaaS players start with compute and storage and move up the stack. Oracle can start at the high end and work back into infrastructure. "AWS was first, but we have a lot of customers with experience already with Oracle Cloud," he said. Screven said that Oracle Cloud is seeing more developer interest due to a free tier.
The big win for Oracle's cloud business will be SaaS and autonomous database services. Oracle's cloud is optimized for its own stack, and that will appeal to its customer base. Oracle's Cloud at Customer product line is also appealing to hybrid cloud customers. Oracle will put an optimized autonomous database in an enterprise and manage it as if it was its own cloud.
For enterprises, Oracle's cloud efforts will be powered by SaaS and it will be a player in other areas. It's unclear whether Oracle's bet on what it calls Generation 2 Cloud Infrastructure will pay off, but its enterprise resource planning, human capital management, supply chain, sales and service, marketing, and NetSuite clouds will keep it a contender.
Instead of doing everything ourselves, we are co-innovating. We have always been the leading on-premise application platform. Thousands of partners and customers have built applications and extensions on SAP for almost 50 years. Our intention is to repeat that for the cloud to position SAP as the leading cloud platform to transform and change the way enterprises work in the digital age. To get there, we have put a lot of work into our cloud platform over the past 12 months, and we will continue to invest in innovation. The time when SAP developed and engaged with customers in silos are over. \t
SAP's 2021 plan is to migrate its customers to the cloud faster and create one data model. Klein added:
We will bring the full force of our business applications and platform to drive holistic business transformation. By enabling our customers to seamlessly design, evolve or in win new business models with agility and speed. To do so, all our main solutions will adopt the cloud platform and share one semantical data model, one AI and analytics layer, one common security and authorization model and the same application business services such as workflow management, with our cloud platform, powered by SAP HANA. Process can be changed, enabling agile workflows. Innovations and extensions can be developed quickly by customers and partners accessing our open platform, using exactly the same data model in business services as our own SAP app. We are convinced that the real value driver of intelligent enterprises in the cloud will be the ability to adapt and on new business model holistically end-to-end with one consistent data model. \t
Workday has more than 3,000 customers and the human capital management software vendor is increasingly adding financial management customers too. As a result, Workday is among the cloud vendors gaining wallet share, according to a Flexera report.
The company is at an inflection point where it is selling more clouds and has a big market to chase as it courts mid-market companies. While the SaaS menu at Workday is decidedly more limited than what rivals SAP and Oracle offer, the company enjoys tighter focus.
Workday co-CEO Aneel Bhusri said that his company is entering an expansion phase that rhymes with the Salesforce playbook. Workday ultimately sees its financial platform being the equal of its HR footprint. Planning and procurement are other new areas. Ultimately, Workday's SaaS challenge will be to sell multiple clouds to customers.
"I would point you to the transition that Salesforce went through. They're 6 years older than us, one of our best partners. They went from being a sales company to a sales and services company to a sales and service and marketing company and platform. Now they've got analytics. We're going through that same journey and growth rates kind of ebb and flow as the different pillars take off." \t \t
Workday is infusing machine learning and automation throughout its platform.
For enterprises, Adobe's plan to dramatically expand its total addressable market can be a good thing -- especially if the company can be used as leverage against incumbent providers.
The company is also looking to be a key part of your data and digital transformation strategies. Adobe has hired former Informatica CEO Anil Chakravarthy as head of its digital experience unit. The move highlights how Adobe sees data integration as key to its expansion. "Every single business is going through the same digital transformation that we were lucky enough to go through almost a decade ago. And if a company cannot engage digitally with the customer, understand how the funnel, all the way from acquiring customers to renewing them, can be done digitally, they're going to be disadvantaged," said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.
Here are a few trends shaping the overarching environment for ServiceNow. This unprecedented environment is breaking physical supply chains. It is exposing the weak links in the old value chains, illuminating how companies struggle cross-functionally to deliver the workflows that create great experiences for customers, employees and partners. The world is experiencing a seismic shift from the obsolete business process evolution to the new workflow revolution. \t \t
\n \n\n",
"page_last_modified": " Wed, 06 Mar 2024 06:22:28 GMT"
},
{
"page_name": "Cloud Market Share: A Look at the Cloud Ecosystem in 2024",
"page_url": "https://kinsta.com/blog/cloud-market-share/",
"page_snippet": "Deep-dive into the cloud market share. Our data and stats comparisons explain the different cloud services and identify the leading cloud providers.Cloud computing gives you the ability to rapidly scale your compute and storage requirements to meet business demands. Through a pay-as-you-go model, you can better control your costs, scaling up or down to meet seasonal demand. As a business, your IT team has a finite amount of resources available. Moving to the cloud lets your business move more quickly than competitors. Cloud computing has grown into a vast and complex ecosystem of technologies, products, and services. Giving rise to a multi-billion dollar economy where many cloud providers compete for an ever-expanding cloud market share. As consumers, navigating and understanding this cloud ecosystem is increasingly difficult. Outside the industry giants \u2013 Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform \u2014 the cloud market remains a mystery to many. Edward Jones is a technology writer with 8 years of industry experience. He has published over 300 articles with major publications that include Microsoft, IBM, and Entrepreneur. Uncover your website's performance bottlenecks to deliver a better user experience. Free Audit \u00b7 Thorough and data-rich comparison of two cloud computing giants, Google Cloud vs AWS. Focusing your IT team on projects that create revenue, rather than locked in a server room managing on-premises infrastructure. In fact, a Verizon study showed 77% of businesses feel cloud technology gives them an advantage over competitors.",
"page_result": "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\tCloud Market Share: A Look at the Cloud Ecosystem in 2024\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\n\n\n Skip to content\n\n\n
Cloud computing has grown into a vast and complex ecosystem of technologies, products, and services. Giving rise to a multi-billion dollar economy where many cloud providers compete for an ever-expanding cloud market share.
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As consumers, navigating and understanding this cloud ecosystem is increasingly difficult. Outside the industry giants \u2013 Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform \u2014 the cloud market remains a mystery to many.
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Today, we are going to take a deep dive and demystify the cloud market. We\u2019ll explain the different cloud services, identify the leading cloud providers, and explore their cloud market share.
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We\u2019ll also help you to discover how and why enterprises are moving to the cloud, the associated benefits, and the costs involved.
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Understanding the Three Main Types of Cloud Computing Services
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Before exploring the cloud market and the cloud market share, first you must understand the three main types of cloud computing. Each type has its own distinct range of services and cloud providers that make up the market. The three main cloud computing types are:
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Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
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IaaS is an offering of cloud computing where the provider supplies you on-demand access to computing resources such as networking, storage, and servers. Within the providers\u2019 infrastructure, you run your own platforms and applications. This provides a flexible hardware resource that can scale depending on your storage and processing needs.
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Platform as a Service (PaaS)
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PaaS is an offering of cloud computing where the provider gives you access to a cloud environment in which to develop, manage, and host applications. You will have access to a range of tools through the platform to support testing and development.
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The provider is responsible for the underlying infrastructure, security, operating systems, and backups.
Through the application, you store and analyze your own data. You don\u2019t have to invest time in installing, managing or upgrading software, this is all handled by the provider.
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Within each of these service categories, you have the option of public, private, hybrid cloud solutions:
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Private Cloud
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A private cloud is where you host on your own data center or intranet. You own, manage, update and upgrade your own cloud ecosystem of server, networking, software, or platform resources. Protecting it all with your own firewall and security solutions.
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Public Cloud
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A public cloud is where the provider supplies you with access to their data center infrastructure. They are responsible for all management, maintenance, security, and upgrades.
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Hybrid Cloud
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A hybrid cloud is where you opt to use a mix of both public and private cloud solutions. You are responsible for managing how the two services interact,\u00a0 especially the security of data passing between both public and private cloud setups.
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An Overview of the Cloud Computing Market
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The cloud computing market is huge. New data from the Synergy Research Group, across seven key cloud service and infrastructure market segments, operators, and vendors \u2013 reports revenues in excess of $150 billion for the first half of 2019. A 24% growth on the previous year.
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As big as the cloud market has become, there is massive scope for expansion. Especially when you consider Gartner\u00a0is projecting worldwide IT spending of $3.79 trillion in 2019.
\nCloud market growth and segment leaders (Image source: Synergy.com)\n
Taking a detailed look at the segments making up the cloud market, public cloud solutions make up the majority. This aligns closely with the RightScale\u00a02019 State of Cloud report. According to which, 91% of businesses reported using a public cloud service, 72% opting for a private cloud solution, and 69% selecting a hybrid solution.
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Based on projections from the IDC, worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure is forecast to double over the next five years. It\u2019s not surprising when you think about how many benefits come with cloud computing.\u00a0Growing from a $229 billion run rate in 2019 to almost $500 billion by 2023. Driven by a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
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The IDC report identifies SaaS as the largest spending category, capturing more than half of all public cloud spending throughout the forecast period. IaaS is reported as the second largest spending category and is the fastest growing with a projected five-year CAGR of 32.0%. PaaS is the lowest spending category, with the second largest five-year CAGR of 29.9%.
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For a more detailed look within the public cloud market we must turn to alternative research and reports.
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A Deep Dive into the SaaS Public Cloud Market Share
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Software as a Service is the most mature public cloud market, showing healthy growth. Recent data from the Synergy Research Group\u00a0reports software vendors generating revenue in excess of $23 billion for Q1 2019.
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Putting the market on an annual run rate in excess of $100 billion. The report highlights annual growth of almost 30%, correlating closely with the IDC\u2019s aforementioned Worldwide Public Cloud Services Spending Guide.
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The SaaS market is dominated by five key vendors. Combined, these SaaS vendors account for 51% of the worldwide SaaS cloud market share.
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Leading the way is Microsoft, with a 17% market share and impressive annual growth of 34%. Microsoft continues to gain market share, primarily due to its dominance in the high- growth collaboration segment.
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Salesforce comes next with 12% SaaS market share and annual growth of 21%. Followed closely by Adobe, with a 10% SaaS market share and an annual growth of 29%. Next is SAP, closing on the vendors above thanks to a 6% SaaS market share and a 39% reported annual growth \u2013 highest of the top five vendors. Lastly is Oracle, also taking a 6% market share and reporting annual growth of 29%.
\nSaaS market share and revenue growth (Image source:\u00a0Synergy.com)\n
The next ten vendors account for another 26% of the SaaS market, with a reported 26% growth. These vendors include Cisco, Google, IBM, ServiceNow, and Workday.
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Evolution of the SaaS Market
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Despite the apparent maturity of the SaaS market, there is still huge scope for expansion. As the current SaaS market only accounts for approximately 20% of total enterprise software spending. With the majority of enterprise software spending still focussed on on-premise software solutions, SaaS vendors are turning to this market to entice businesses to a cloud setup.
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In 2019, the SaaS vendor landscape is largely split into three camps \u2013 traditional enterprise software vendors, born-in-the-cloud vendors and large IT vendors looking to expand in the market:
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Traditional enterprise software vendors
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This camp includes the big names you would expect like Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and IBM. They have a huge base of existing on-premises consumers which they will be looking to convert to SaaS-based subscription models.
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Born-in-the-cloud vendors
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These relatively new companies are experiencing rapid expansion with higher growth rates. They include the likes of Zendesk, Workday, and Atlassian. What they lack however is the huge brand recognition of the Microsoft\u2019s of this world.
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Large IT vendors
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Making a play for the SaaS market, this group includes the likes of Google and Cisco. Carving a niche for themselves in the market with services like Google Workspace and Cisco\u2019s collaboration apps.
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Exploring and Understanding the IaaS and PaaS Public Cloud Market
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When it comes to getting an accurate picture of the IaaS and PaaS markets, things get a little tricky. Leading vendors in this space \u2013 including Amazon and Microsoft \u2013 often report combined IaaS and PaaS revenues.
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Add to this a lack of transparency in their report breakdowns, and it\u2019s easy to see why getting a true picture of the market is so challenging. Thankfully, reports from leading research agencies \u2013 like Gartner and IDC \u2013 help to give us some deeper insight.
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Which Provider Has the Largest Market Share in Public Cloud Infrastructure?
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The most recent data from Gartner\u00a0on the worldwide Infrastructure as a Service market shows annual revenues of $32.4 billion. A 31.3% growth from $24.7 billion in 2017.
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According to Gartner, the market is dominated by five vendors who account for nearly 80% of worldwide IaaS cloud market share in 2018. These vendors are Amazon (47.8%), Microsoft (15.5%), Alibaba (7.7%), Google (4.0%) and IBM (1.8%).
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Table: Worldwide IaaS Public Cloud Services Market Share, 2017-2018 (Millions of U.S. Dollars)
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Company
\n
2018\n
Revenue
\n
2018\n
Market Share (%)
\n
2017\n
Revenue
\n
2017\n
Market Share (%)
\n
2018-2017\n
Growth (%)
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\n
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Amazon
\n
15,495
\n
47.8
\n
12,221
\n
49.4
\n
26.8
\n
\n
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Microsoft
\n
5,038
\n
15.5
\n
3,130
\n
12.7
\n
60.9
\n
\n
\n
Alibaba
\n
2,499
\n
7.7
\n
1,298
\n
5.3
\n
92.6
\n
\n
\n
Google
\n
1,314
\n
4.0
\n
820
\n
3.3
\n
60.2
\n
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IBM
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577
\n
1.8
\n
463
\n
1.9
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24.7
\n
\n
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Others
\n
7,519
\n
23.2
\n
6,768
\n
27.4
\n
11.1
\n
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Total
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32,441
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100.0
\n
24,699
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100.0
\n
31.3
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Let\u2019s take a closer look at the top 5 public cloud infrastructure providers\u2019 infrastructure in 2019. Combining data from Gartner and the providers\u2019 respective revenue reports.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS)
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Owning almost half the world\u2019s public cloud infrastructure market, Amazon is the clear market leader. In 2018, Amazon reported revenues of $15.4 billion, a growth of 26.8% on the previous year. Carrying this dominance into 2019, Amazon reports Q1\u00a0and Q2\u00a0combined AWS revenue of $16.1 billion, a 39% growth from H1 2018.
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Microsoft Azure
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With a market share at 15.5%, Gartner estimates Azure annual revenues of $5 billion and a growth of 60.9% in 2018, boosting Azure market share. However, getting a true picture of Microsoft\u2019s public cloud infrastructure market share remains a mystery. As Microsoft continues to mask Azure revenue in a combined \u201ccommercial cloud business\u201d.
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In 2019, Microsoft looks set to claim\u00a0 AWS market share, reporting H1 YoY growth of 70% in Azure revenues. Overall, Microsoft\u2019s Q1\u00a0and Q2\u00a0combined commercial cloud business revenue is now reported to be $20.6 billion, a 40% growth on H1 2018.
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Alibaba
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Owning a 7.7% public cloud market share according to Gartner, Alibaba has annual revenues of $2.49 billion, and impressive growth of 92.6% in 2018. The Chinese ecommerce giant continues its impressive growth into 2019, reporting Q1\u00a0and Q2\u00a0combined revenues of $2.2 billion, a growth of 66%. This places the company\u2019s annual revenue run rate in excess of $4 billion.
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Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
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Google\u2019s Cloud Platform\u00a0is estimated by Gartner to command a public cloud market share of 4%, with annual revenues of $1.3 billion and growth of 60% in 2018. This year could see the Google overtake Alibaba, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai reporting cloud service revenues on track for $8 billion. This needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as Google combines the GCP revenues with it\u2019s SaaS Google Workspace offering.
According to Gartner, IBM owns a 1.8% market share with annual revenues of $577 million and a growth of 24% in 2018. Renowned primarily for its hybrid cloud services, IBM is set to shake up the market in 2019 having acquired fellow IaaS provider Red Hat for $34 billion.
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Understanding the Opportunity in the PaaS Market
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In 2019, the PaaS market is forecast to generate in excess of $20 billion according to Gartner. A figure expected to double by 2022. The market continues to grow with more than 360 vendors and 550 cloud platform services across 22 categories.
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Unlike IaaS and SaaS, the PaaS market is said to be near impossible to dominate. Incredibly, Gartner reports only 10 of the existing 360 PaaS vendors are able to offer 10 or more of the 22 services outlined in the report. Driving the majority of vendors to focus on a single fit-for-purpose PaaS offering over a multipurpose solution.
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For those with the resources available, there is an opportunity to claim a majority in the PaaS market, by developing a multipurpose solution covering all 22 services. At present, there are only a handful of vendors able to compete in this space. Unsurprisingly, these mega-vendors include Amazon, SAP, Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Salesforce and IBM.
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Why Businesses Are Moving to the Cloud
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Every business\u2019s decision to move to the cloud is unique. However, there are some common reasons and natural evolutions which lead a company to make the transition. Let\u2019s take a look at the most common reasons that could lead your business to migrate a cloud-based ecosystem:
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Added Benefits of Cloud
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One of the most common reasons to make the transition is the wide range of benefits offered by cloud computing. Greater flexibility, scalability, and security are just a few of the more popular reasons. We\u2019ll cover these benefits in more detail in the next section.
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End-of-life Events
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All hardware and software products have a lifecycle. When a vendor announces an end-of-life event, it\u2019s an opportunity for you to consider alternative solutions. Increasingly, businesses are using these naturally occurring events to move from on-premises to cloud-based solutions.
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Allowing you to decommission old licenses and hardware. Not to mention avoiding the security risk of running a solution following an end-of-life event.
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Business Acquisitions
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When companies merge, challenges often arise due to the incompatibility of the different applications and technology landscapes. Especially if you need to consider managing these landscapes across multiple on-premises data centers.
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If you\u2019re in this situation, migrating these applications and technologies to the cloud might be the ideal solution. Offering a smoother transition with a consistent solution able to seamlessly accommodate new geographies and employees moving forward.
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Contract Renewals
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Many businesses have contracts with private data centers, hardware, and software providers that must be periodically renewed. Much like an end-of-life event, this presents you with an opportunity to reconsider how you deploy specific services and solutions.
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Increasing cost bases and a range of other limiting factors present you the opportunity to make the transition to a more cost-effective cloud-based solution.
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Compliance
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Data compliance is the cornerstone of business operations if you\u2019re in industries like financial services and healthcare. If you operate on-premises solutions, the evolution and continuing management of compliance regulations can present a significant resource challenge.
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Moving to cloud allows you to choose the services that are already compliant. With the cloud provider responsible for any upgrades should those compliance requirements change.
Whether it\u2019s lack of tools or talent \u2013 like many businesses \u2013 you will find public cloud offering you a ready-made solution to mitigate risk. Not to mention the vast resources cloud providers can offer to protect against threats.
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Capacity Requirements
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Like many businesses, you may have hardware utilization issues when experiencing rapid growth \u2013 or huge seasonal capacity shifts. Costs can quickly mount if you\u2019re unable to meet business demand or end up paying on on-premises services which are largely underutilized.
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A move to the cloud will give you the flexibility to rapidly increase and decrease compute. Reducing costs via a pay-as-you-go model.
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Software and Hardware Refresh Cycles
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Managing an on-premises data center or software application, you are responsible for keeping everything up to date. When evaluating an upcoming refresh cycle, you may find it significantly less expensive and beneficial to transition to cloud.
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A SaaS subscription, or the lift-and-shift of an application into the public cloud, can provide significant cost savings versus costly on-premises software licenses and hardware upgrades.
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Benefits of Moving to Cloud Computing Services Business-Wise
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Now we\u2019ve covered the main reasons for your business to move to the cloud, let\u2019s look at the associated benefits.
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Cost Savings
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One of the key motivations for many to move to cloud is the associated cost savings \u2013 both direct and indirect. Depending on your business and how you use the cloud, you can make cost savings in a number of ways.
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A few examples include scaling your compute to changing demands, reducing resources spent managing hardware and software, or gaining greater insight to your data.
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Scalability
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One of the key benefits of cloud services is scalability. Cloud computing gives you the ability to rapidly scale your compute and storage requirements to meet business demands. Through a pay-as-you-go model, you can better control your costs, scaling up or down to meet seasonal demand.
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Competitive Edge
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As a business, your IT team has a finite amount of resources available. Moving to the cloud lets your business move more quickly than competitors.
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Focusing your IT team on projects that create revenue, rather than locked in a server room managing on-premises infrastructure. In fact, a\u00a0Verizon study\u00a0showed 77% of businesses feel cloud technology gives them an advantage over competitors.
Cloud providers offer your business a vastly improved security solution. Microsoft, as an example, monitors over 6.5 trillion threat signals per day, with a team of 3500 in-house security experts whose sole purpose is to protect your systems and data. Moving to the cloud places the resource demands of security in the hands of the provider, freeing your team to focus on other areas.
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Disaster Recovery
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A key factor in the success of your business is ensuring your technologies remain operational. No matter how in control you are of business processes, your systems will eventually let you down. In today\u2019s market, even limited downtimes can impact significantly on your productivity, revenue, and brand reputation.
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Cloud technology provides the protection of rapid data recovery and vast data centers able to failover in the event of outages.
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Increased Collaboration
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Cloud computing can simplify and improve your business\u2019s collaboration. Cloud-based platforms give your team members the ability to create, edit, view, and share information easily and securely. Built mobility features enhance collaboration, allowing your team to connect on the go, through their mobile device.
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Mobility
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Cloud computing keeps your employees in the loop, wherever they are in the world. By supporting mobile access, cloud technology gives your employees the ability to securely access your business\u2019s systems and data via their mobile device. Supporting remote working and keeping your employees connected and productive, even when they are on the move.
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Insight
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In this digital age, you can now track countless data points surrounding your customers transactions and interactions with your business. Of course, analyzing this data for business value is both difficult and time-consuming.
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Without huge investment, the right cloud provider can quickly offer powerful compute and storage capabilities with built-in analytics to process, analyze, and find value in your data. Especially with the recent advancements and availability of BI tools, supported by AI and machine learning.
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Quality Control
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A lack of quality and inconsistent reporting can have a huge impact on the success of your business. Cloud-based systems help prevent this, storing all documents in one place in a single format. These collaborative systems offer backup and version control, giving your employees access to the same information whilst maintaining data accuracy and consistency.
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Sustainability
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With the current state of the environment, sustainability has become a top priority for businesses. Choosing a cloud provider will help lower your carbon footprint. As leading cloud technology providers champion the use of renewable energy in their data centers.
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They also opt for a virtual services model, reducing reliance on physical products and hardware. Cloud computing also provides the benefit of remote accessibility, helping cut down on commuter related emissions from your employees.
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Calculating the Cost of Cloud for Your Business
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One of the original motivating factors to move to the cloud has been reducing costs. However, the narrative surrounding cloud being cheaper than on-premises solutions is changing.
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While it\u2019s still possible to significantly cut expenditure by moving your operations to the cloud, it\u2019s not guaranteed. Achieving cost savings for your business depends on the cloud pricing model you select and how efficiently you operate your cloud services.
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It\u2019s also important to recognize that initial investments in cloud migration and optimization will create a negative ROI in the short term.
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Marco Meinardi, Research Director at Gartner, published a use case of workload migration\u00a0for 2500 virtual machines from an on-premises data center to Amazon Web Services EC2.
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After initial investment in migration and cloud optimization techniques \u2013 rightsizing, scheduling policies, and reserved instances \u2013 the total cost of ownership fell by 55% for cloud IaaS versus on-premises deployment.
\nTotal cost of migration to cloud (Image source: Gartner.com)\n
Of course, when calculating the cost of cloud, it\u2019s always important to consider the indirect cost savings for your IT department. This can include the time your business saves not having to carry out software updates, manage failing hardware, or maintaining compliance.
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If you\u2019re considering a move to the cloud, there are a number of tools and pricing calculators to help you calculate the migration costs and TCO for cloud IaaS compared with your current on-premises deployment:
Comparing Costs for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform
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If you\u2019re planning your migration to public cloud infrastructure, you\u2019ll want to choose the right cloud provider and pricing model. No easy task, as the pricing schemes offered by public cloud vendors is anything but simple. Cloud prices can change significantly depending on any number of factors. Some of which include:
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Specification and number of servers you want to deploy.
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The volume of data you need to store and transfer.
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Which operating system and software you deploy.
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Paying by the minute, hour, or month.
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Opting for a pay-as-you-go, reserved instances or a long-term contract.
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The location of the cloud data center you require.
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That\u2019s just scratching the surface. Leading vendors like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform offer hundreds of different services. Each with its own pricing schedule and thousands of configuration options that change the price.
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We\u2019ve already taken a deep dive into comparing AWS and Google Cloud Platform\u00a0helping you to understand the range of IaaS and PaaS products and services available. Microsoft also has a handy guide for AWS to Azure services comparison, to help you compare their services like for like.
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To help you conceptualize some of the costs of a cloud deployment, we\u2019ve compared the leading IaaS and PaaS providers: AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform looking at a combined public cloud hosting deployment of servers and storage.
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To simplify the price comparison we\u2019ve used Cloudorado. The tool allows you to select basic specifications such as CPU power, RAM, storage requirements, and operating systems. Using this base level configuration, it compares and contrasts the providers\u2019 different services with a price per month.
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For this example, I\u2019ve input the following setup:
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CPU Power: 4
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RAM: 8GB
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Storage: 1TB
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OS: Linux
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Cloud Provider
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Cloud Hosting Offer
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Price Per Month
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Google Cloud Platform
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Custom Machine 8 GB RAM / 4x CPUs
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$126
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Microsoft Azure
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A4 v2 Virtual Machine
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$159
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Amazon Web Services
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EC2 c5.xlarge + 1 TB SSD EBS
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$225
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After comparing and contrasting a range of cloud hosting setups, Google Cloud Platform is consistently the most economical option. The exception being when you opt for a Windows OS, where Microsoft Azure comes out on top due to its ownership of the operating system.
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Of course, these costs and setups are just scratching the surface. If you begin to dig deeper, each of the providers offers hundreds of customizations and discounting models that combine to create a highly personalized cloud deployment. Many provide huge committed use discounts if you are willing to purchase the cloud computing time upfront.
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If you\u2019re familiar with your deployment requirements and want to create a quote, each of the providers offers a pricing calculator. The calculator gives you the full picture of the IaaS and PaaS offering, allowing you to create highly personalized quotes, representative of your deployment needs.
As customers, the cloud market has given us a vast range of competitive services to help realize real business benefits. To make this a reality, you\u2019ll need to have the in-depth knowledge to navigate the many options available. You\u2019ll also need a willingness to optimize your cloud deployment to recognize real cost savings over on-premises deployments.
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Across all SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS markets we see the familiar names of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. These technology giants continue to dominate the market share across all segments. And with the resources to back research and development of new and existing products, expect to see dominance remain in the coming years.
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When considering a move to cloud providers, make sure you research and understand the competitive products, service options, and discounting models. Investing time here will ensure you a cloud setup customized to your business\u2019s needs at the most efficient (not cheapest) cost. And when calculating costs, always make sure you consider the indirect cost benefits from switching to a cloud model.
Kinsta was one of the first hosting companies to exclusively use GCP to power its entire WordPress Hosting infrastructure (back in 2016), and many competitors have followed suit. Now, even our Application Hosting and Database Hosting offerings have their infrastructures built on Google Cloud Platform servers.
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What about you? What\u2019s your experience with cloud services? Tell us in the comment section below!
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\n Edward Jones\n
Edward Jones is a technology writer with 8 years of industry experience. He has published over 300 articles with major publications that include Microsoft, IBM, and Entrepreneur.
Wonderful article. Very insightful. I would have loved a bit of coverage of RDS (Remote Database Service) that is the core to many businesses. Also, an on-premise licensing cost of Microsoft’s SQLServer could easily be around $15,000 to run on a single core. When you work with a cloud provider, these licensing issues are bundled into the fee that you pay them. Usually works out to be very economical.
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Keep them coming.
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\n \n \n Trapti \n \n \n May 27, 2021 at 8:48 am \n
Great article and information. Can ou include the data on market share from 2019 to 2020 as well, so that we can see the trends in growth rate for the providers ?
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"page_last_modified": ""
},
{
"page_name": "Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud Market Share Q3 2023 Results | CRN",
"page_url": "https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/microsoft-aws-google-cloud-market-share-q3-2023-results",
"page_snippet": "Worldwide cloud market share 2023 rankings from AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM and Alibaba as the cloud services market hits $68 billion.Before jumping into AWS, Microsoft, Google, IBM and Alibaba\u2019s cloud market share, it\u2019s interesting to note that Synergy Research Group cited artificial intelligence, specifically generative AI (GenAI) as a reason why cloud computing growth continues to explode in 2023. Here are the top five cloud computing market share leaders as of Q3 2023.",
"page_result": "\n\n \n Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud Market Share Q3 2023 Results | CRN\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n
\n
Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud Market Share Q3 2023 Results
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Here are AWS, IBM, Alibaba, Microsoft and Google Cloud\u2019s global cloud market share numbers, according to new data from Synergy Research Group.
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Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Alibaba and Google captured the most cloud market share during third quarter 2023 as worldwide spending on cloud infrastructure services surpassed $68 billion.
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In aggregate, AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud won a whopping 66 percent share of the worldwide cloud market in Q3 2023 as the three tech giant\u2019s continue to tussle for leadership, according to new data from Synergy Research Group.
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Worldwide enterprise cloud infrastructure services spending increased by $10.5 billion year over year in third quarter 2023, representing an 18 percent growth rate. This marks the fifth successive quarter in which the cloud market grew by between $10 billion to $11 billion from the prior year.
\u201cThe relative scale of their cloud operations now shows Microsoft being twice the size of Google, with Amazon being almost equal to the other two combined,\u201d said John Dinsdale, chief analyst and managing director at Synergy in an email to CRN.
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CRN breaks down the top five cloud market share leaders on a global basis, alongside market share from the prior quarter as well as year over year market share numbers.
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Global Cloud Market Impacted By AI
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Before jumping into AWS, Microsoft, Google, IBM and Alibaba\u2019s cloud market share, it\u2019s interesting to note that Synergy Research Group cited artificial intelligence, specifically generative AI (GenAI) as a reason why cloud computing growth continues to explode in 2023.
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\u201cAs an already massive cloud market keeps on growing, the year-on-year growth rate almost inevitably declines,\u201d John Dinsdale, chief analyst and managing director at Synergy, told CRN via email. \u201cBut we are now starting to see a stabilization of growth rates, as cloud provider investments in generative AI technology help to further boost enterprise spending on cloud services.\u201d
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Dinsdale said it\u2019s still early days for GenAI but the technology \u201cwill help to keep cloud growth buoyant over the coming years.\u201d
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Here are the top five cloud computing market share leaders as of Q3 2023.
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No. 5: IBM
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Q3 2023 Market Share: 3 Percent
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Q2 2023 Market Share: 3 Percent
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Q3 2022 Market Share: 3 Percent
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The longtime technology giant won 3 percent share in the global cloud infrastructure services market in Q3 2023. IBM has consistently ranked No. 5 in the cloud rankings by capturing 3 percent share over the past several quarters.
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The Armonk, N.Y.-based company reported $14.8 billion in total revenue during its third quarter 2023, representing 5 percent growth year over year.
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IBM doesn\u2019t break out its cloud sales figures, but instead includes them inside its Software segment. IBM\u2019s Software segment generated $6.3 billion in revenue in Q3 2023, up 8 percent year over year.
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No. 4: Alibaba (Alibaba Cloud)
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Q3 2023 Market Share: 4 Percent
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Q2 2023 Market Share: 4 Percent
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Q3 2022 Market Share: 5 Percent
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Alibaba Cloud ranked No. 4 for cloud market share in the third quarter 2023 by winning 4 percent share. The Chinese company holds significant market share, approximately 33 percent, in China and in some parts of Asia.
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On a regional level, China\u2019s largest domestic cloud provider bests the likes of Tencent Cloud and Huawei in terms of cloud sales, according to Synergy data. However, the company isn\u2019t a large player in North America and doesn\u2019t compared to AWS, Microsoft and Google on a worldwide level.
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Alibaba\u2019s worldwide market share has slightly dipped from around 5 percent share throughout 2022, to around 4 percent share this year.
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Alibaba Group is set to report the financial earnings results for its third quarter 2023 on Nov. 16.
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No. 3: Google (Google Cloud)
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Q3 2023 Market Share: 11 Percent
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Q2 2023 Market Share: 11 Percent
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Q3 2022 Market Share: 11 Percent
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With the hiring of CEO Thomas Kurian in late 2018, Google Cloud has cemented itself over the years as being the world\u2019s third-largest cloud company. Google Cloud continues to be the fastest growing cloud company in the globe in terms of sales percentage, growing revenue by 22 percent year over year in Q3 2023.
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The Mountain View, Calif.-based company won 11 percent share of the global cloud infrastructure services market in third quarter 2023. Google Cloud\u2019s market share historically hovered around 9 percent to 10 percent market share over the past few years, but has witnessed a steady 11 percent share victory since 2022.
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In Q3 2023, Google Cloud generated $8.4 billion in total revenue, with operating income of $266 million.
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No. 2: Microsoft
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Q3 2023 Market Share: 23 Percent
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Q2 2023 Market Share: 22 Percent
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Q3 2022 Market Share: 21 Percent
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The world\u2019s largest software company won the silver medal in the cloud market by winning 23 percent share in Q3 2023, as Microsoft continues to improve share. The Redmond, Wash.-based company increased share from 21 percent in Q3 2022 to now 23 percent global share.
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Microsoft does not provide to the public its Azure sales figures. Instead, Microsoft combines Azure, server product and other cloud services revenue all under its Microsoft\u2019s Intelligent Cloud umbrella.
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In Q3 calendar year 2023, Microsoft Intelligent Cloud group generated $24.3 billion in sales, representing a 19 percent year over year growth rate. The group reported a whopping $11.7 billion in operating income, easily besting both AWS and Google Cloud.
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No. 1: Amazon (AWS)
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Q3 2023 Market Share: 32 Percent
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Q2 2023 Market Share: 32 Percent
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Q3 2022 Market Share: 34 Percent
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The world\u2019s longtime dominant cloud market share leader won 32 percent share of the global cloud infrastructure services market in Q3 2023 to win the gold medal. AWS share has hovered between 32 percent share and 34 percent share over the past several years.
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However, it is key to note that AWS sales growth rate has been lower than Microsoft and Google Cloud as of late. In Q3 2023, AWS generated $23.1 billion in revenue, representing a 12 percent growth rate year over year.
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AWS generated operating income of $7 billion in Q3 2023, compared to $5.4 billion year over year. The cloud company is Amazon\u2019s most profitable business.
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Other Notable Market Share Companies
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Salesforce Q3 2023 Market Share: 3 Percent
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Oracle Q3 2023 Market Share: 2 Percent
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There is little doubt that AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud will continue to lead the market by leaps and bounds over the next several quarters and, potentially, years. Although there two companies\u2014Oracle and Salesforce\u2014who are fighting to be in line right behind the big three.
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Salesforce has cracked into the top five market share leaders in cloud for the past several quarters. In Q3 2023, Salesforce won 3 percent share of the market, similar to 3 percent share in Q2 2023.
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Oracle has consistently generated around 2 percent share in the global cloud infrastructure services market for the past few quarters. In Q3 2023 as well as in Q2 2023, Oracle won 2 percent share of the market.
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Other companies who have a market share of 1 percent include Baidu, China Telecom, China Unicom, Huawei, Fujitsu, NTT, Snowflake, SAP, Rackspace and VMware.
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\n \n \n \n\n",
"page_last_modified": " Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:58:08 GMT"
},
{
"page_name": "Even as cloud infrastructure market growth slows, Microsoft continues ...",
"page_url": "https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/06/even-as-cloud-infrastructure-market-growth-slows-microsoft-continues-to-gain-on-amazon/",
"page_snippet": "Although the cloud infrastructure market began slowing down in 2022, Microsoft was still able to gain ground on Amazon.Amazon was first to market and has had a long head start, but it seems as the market slows after years of steady growth, it\u2019s giving its chief competitor, Microsoft, a bit of an opening to gain on them. It could be partly due at least to the fact that Amazon\u2019s market maturity is finally catching up to it, and Microsoft is able to gain some advantage in spite of spending slowing overall. It will be interesting to watch the market in 2023 and see how the macro economic environment affects revenue, and if the slower growth we\u2019ve been seeing continues to work in favor of Amazon\u2019s competitors by enabling them to gain more ground.",
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It was a rough quarter for the cloud infrastructure market as companies looked for ways to cut back on spending in an uncertain economy. When you combine that with the strong dollar and a weak Chinese market, the market slowed to 21% growth, a precipitous drop from the 36% growth we had seen the year prior.
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While we aren\u2019t seeing the gaudy growth of years past, Synergy Research still found the market exceeded $61 billion for the quarter with the 12 month trailing revenues of over $212 billion, a hefty sum by any measure, even with the slowdown.
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Also of note was that while each of The Big Three saw growth slow in Q4 2022 from the previous quarter, Microsoft still managed to gain market share ground on Amazon. Microsoft increased its share from 23%, up from 21% the prior quarter, while Amazon fell from 34% to 33% and Google remained steady at 11%. The Big Three cloud providers accounted for 66% of worldwide cloud revenue.
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That comes out to approximately $20 billion for Amazon, $14 billion for Microsoft and $7 billion for Google. Per usual, this is looking at IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud services. It doesn\u2019t include SaaS, which is measured separately.
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Image Credits: Synergy Research
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Amazon cloud revenue grew a modest 20% over the prior year, and the company acknowledged in the earnings call that growth dropped even further to the mid-teens in the first month of the year. Meanwhile Microsoft reported cloud growth of 22%, down from 24% the prior quarter and Google Cloud revenue grew 32%, down from the 38% growth the previous quarter.
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Amazon was first to market and has had a long head start, but it seems as the market slows after years of steady growth, it\u2019s giving its chief competitor, Microsoft, a bit of an opening to gain on them. It could be partly due at least to the fact that Amazon\u2019s market maturity is finally catching up to it, and Microsoft is able to gain some advantage in spite of spending slowing overall.
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John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy says there were three key reasons for this quarter’s drop-off, which he believes are short-term issues, and he remains optimistic for the future. \u201cThere are three main factors. The strengthened US dollar diminishes the apparent growth rate of many non-US markets; the large Chinese market remains constrained by pandemic issues and local policies; and the worsened economy has caused some enterprises to more closely review spending on cloud services. These factors should be primarily short term in nature and Synergy forecasts that growth rates will remain strong over the next few years,\u201d he said in a statement.
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It will be interesting to watch the market in 2023 and see how the macro economic environment affects revenue, and if the slower growth we’ve been seeing continues to work in favor of Amazon\u2019s competitors by enabling them to gain more ground.
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"page_name": "The Latest Cloud Computing Statistics (updated February 2024) | ...",
"page_url": "https://aag-it.com/the-latest-cloud-computing-statistics/",
"page_snippet": "Cloud computing has transformed both the business world and our personal lives. Find out how the cloud is evolving with the latest cloud computing statistics, updated for February 2024.This was followed later the same year with EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud, providing computer resources over the internet. Since 2006, AWS has grown to offer over 200 services in the cloud, including machine learning and AI. In Q3 2022, AWS accounted for 32% of global cloud spending \u2013 more than its closest competitors, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, combined (31%). Cloud computing also provides convenience. Scaling resources depending on workloads or adding new services can happen faster through the cloud than installing additional infrastructure or network resources on-site. In the cloud, organisations are agile and able to respond quickly to changes in their market or within their workforce. Find out how the cloud is evolving with the latest cloud computing statistics, updated for February 2024. ... 12-month revenues between the start of 2021 and 2022 for cloud infrastructure services reached $191 billion. AWS had the largest market share of cloud infrastructure services at 33% in Q1 2022. The cloud market is projected to be worth $376.36 billion by 2029. It\u2019s estimated that the world will store 200 zettabytes (2 billion terabytes) in the cloud by 2025. The average cloud user spends around $400 monthly for a single server. Hosting the entire back-office infrastructure costs an average of $15,000 per month. Just 11% of organisations have encrypted between 81-100% of the sensitive data they store in the cloud. Cloud computing provides computer resources over the internet.",
"page_result": "\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Latest Cloud Computing Statistics (updated February 2024) | AAG IT Support\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The Latest Cloud Computing Statistics (updated February 2024)
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\nCloud computing has transformed both the business world and our personal lives. Find out how the cloud is evolving with the latest cloud computing statistics, updated for February 2024.\n
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\n01.02.24\n\nCharles Griffiths\n\n
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Headline Cloud Computing Statistics for 2024
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12-month revenues between the start of 2021 and 2022 for cloud infrastructure services reached $191 billion.
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AWS had the largest market share of cloud infrastructure services at 33% in Q1 2022.
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Microsoft Azure had a market share of 22% in Q1 2022, with Google at 10% and all other companies at 35%.
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In total, Amazon, Microsoft and Google accounted for 66% of the cloud market at the start of 2023.
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Public cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) revenue in 2022 was $111 billion.
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The cloud market is projected to be worth $376.36 billion by 2029.
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It\u2019s estimated that the world will store 200 zettabytes (2 billion terabytes) in the cloud by 2025.
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The average cloud user spends around $400 monthly for a single server. Hosting the entire back-office infrastructure costs an average of $15,000 per month.
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Just 11% of organisations have encrypted between 81-100% of the sensitive data they store in the cloud.
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Cloud Computing Overview
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Cloud computing provides computer resources over the internet. It’s an efficient, cost-effective alternative to maintaining on-site network infrastructure and has seen a surge in popularity in recent years – partly driven by the pandemic and resulting changes in the workplace.
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In 2022, 60% of corporate data was stored in the cloud. This figure is expected to increase as cloud adoption becomes more widespread. In 2015, just 30% of corporate data was stored in the cloud. The share of data in the cloud doubling in just 7 years highlights the profound impact this transformative technology has had in the business world.
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The cloud isn’t just used for business. An estimated 2.3 billion people use personal clouds such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and iCloud, more than doubling from 1.1 billion in 2014.
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The Most Popular Cloud Services in 2023
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Amazon Web Services:
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At the start of 2023, AWS had a market share of around 33%, the largest of any cloud service globally. After Q1 2023, AWS’s market share decreased to 32%.
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Microsoft Azure:
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Microsoft Azure reached a market share of 23% at the end of 2022, beginning 2023 as the second-largest cloud service globally. Azure maintained its 23% market share after Q1 2023.
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Google Cloud Platform:
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Google Cloud began 2023 with a market share of 11%, growing 1% in Q4 2022 compared to the same point in 2021. Google Cloud’s market share decreased to 10% after Q1 2023.
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Public Cloud Services Revenue
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Public cloud service revenue surged past $415 billion in 2022, growing from $343 billion in 2021. Public cloud service revenues in 2023 are predicted to reach $526 billion.
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Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) revenues grew 29.7% in 2022 to reach $120.3 billion.
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Amazon had the largest share of revenues for IaaS in 2022 -40% ($48.126 billion).
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Cloud Computing in 2022
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Q1:
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Cloud spending increased 34% YoY to reach nearly $53 billion – making it the 11th time in 12 quarters that the YoY growth rate has been in the 34-40% range.
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Amazon started 2022 with the largest worldwide market share, remaining at 33%.
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For the third consecutive quarter, AWS’s annual growth exceeded that of the overall market.
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Microsoft gained a 2% market share compared to Q4 2021.
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Google\u2019s annual market share gain approached 1%. Overall, it had a 10% market share.
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The collective market share of all other cloud providers has shrunk from 48% to 36% despite revenue growth of over 150% since Q1 2018, as their growth rates remain below the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
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The top 3 cloud service providers (AWS, Azure and Google) collectively grew 42% YoY.
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Q2:
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Nearly $55 billion was spent on cloud infrastructure services in the quarter – 29% more than the same point last year.
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Amazon\u2019s worldwide market share increased by over 1% to almost 34%.
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Amazon, Microsoft, and Google combined had a 65% share of the global cloud market in Q2 2022, up from 61% in 2021.
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Q3:
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Spending in Q3 exceeded $57 billion – an increase of over $11 billion compared to Q3 2021.
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Compared to the same point in 2021, the three largest cloud providers increased their market share by at least 1%.
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Amazon, Microsoft, and Google combined had a 66% share of the worldwide market in Q3, up from 61% a year ago.
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Google Cloud’s growth rate increased by 48%, boosting its market share by 1%. Google also announced new cloud regions in Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand.
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Q4:
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More than $61 billion was spent globally on cloud infrastructure services in Q4 2022.
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Companies spent over $10 billion more in Q4 2022 compared to Q4 2021.
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Microsoft Azure reached a market share of 23%, a 2% increase over its average of 21% in the last 4 quarters.
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The 3 largest cloud service providers (Amazon, Microsoft and Google) collectively held 66% of the global cloud market.
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Cloud Computing in 2023
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End-user public cloud spending is expected to reach 597.3 billion in 2023.
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Cloud Computing Trends In 2023
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Microsoft Azure catches up with Amazon Web Services
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AWS remains the most popular cloud service, with a 33% market share at the start of 2022. However, Azure is seeing increased usage compared to previous years. Microsoft\u2019s cloud platform gained a 2% market share in 2022 from 2021, with revenue up 24%.
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A 2022 study indicated that organisations that are \u2018light\u2019 or \u2018moderate\u2019 cloud users are more likely to use Azure over AWS. For light users, 66% used Azure, compared to 65% AWS. For moderate users, 70% used Azure, 2% more than those using AWS (68%).
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However, for those organisations that see themselves as \u2018heavy\u2019 cloud users, AWS is still the preferred choice, albeit by a small margin. 81% use Amazon\u2019s cloud platform for their workloads, compared with 80% for Azure.
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The cloud becomes more popular with SMEs
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In 2022, 57% of SMB workloads and 56% of SMB data resided in public clouds, with a further 6% of each planned to move into the cloud in the next 12 months. This means that, as we move into 2023, 63% of SMB workloads will end up being hosted in the cloud, as well as 62% of SMB data.
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Businesses look towards multi-cloud solutions
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As businesses move more of their storage and computing power off-premises, they need to ensure they are getting the best value for money. Diversifying their cloud spend across different providers prevents businesses from becoming locked into one system and minimises the impact of issues with the provider, such as outages.
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89% of businesses report using multi-cloud solutions, with just 9% using a single public cloud. Overwhelmingly, most businesses are using hybrid clouds (public and private) – 80% use hybrid clouds, while 7% use multiple public and 2% use multiple private clouds.
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The cloud gaming market expands
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The global cloud gaming market was valued at $1.72 billion in 2021 and grew to $3.24 billion in 2022. By 2024, growth is projected to reach around $6.3 billion.
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Increased investment by gaming companies and the growing popularity of streaming games on-demand are expected to drive huge growth in the market. By 2029, the global cloud gaming market is estimated to be worth $40.81 billion, with a CAGR of 43.6% during the period.
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Cloud spend management becomes the priority
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Managing cloud spend has become the top priority for both enterprises and SMBs. 82% of all organisations are finding cloud spending their main challenge, ahead of security (79%) and lack of resources or expertise (78%).
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Meanwhile, cloud migration is still presenting a challenge to many enterprises, with 71% struggling with moving data into the cloud. SMBs are faring better, with just 42% reportedly struggling with migration.
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Cloud Adoption Statistics
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Most organisations that use the cloud employ multi-cloud solutions – 89% in a 2022 survey of 753 organisations said they use more than 1 cloud for storage and workloads. Just 9% use a single public cloud (increasing 1% from 2021), and 2% use a single private cloud solution.
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Of those using multiple clouds, 80% use hybrid solutions, 7% use multiple public clouds, and 2% use multiple private clouds.
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Most organisations use multiple private and multiple public clouds – 48% compared to 31% using multiple public with one private, 12% with one public with multiple private and 9% with a single public and a single private cloud solution.
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Covid-19 highlighted the advantages incorporating cloud applications can provide in business. By 2024, companies will look to dedicate 80% of their total IT budget to cloud spend. Just 9% have decreased their annual cloud budget in the wake of Covid-19, with 65% increasing their cloud spend. More than half are moving more applications into the cloud.
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Cloud Computing In Business Statistics
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The cloud continues to see increased use in business, as more operations move online and workplaces incorporate remote and hybrid options for employees. We supply IT Support for Law Firms and Financial Services IT Support, and can confirm even sectors that aren’t thought of as tech-savvy are being forced to embrace cloud technology.
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Over 98% of organisations use the cloud in some way, whether through SaaS applications or a fully cloud-native network. Cloud infrastructure spend is estimated to increase by 23% in 2023.
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A 2022 study of 753 technical and business professionals worldwide found that 63% \u2018heavily\u2019 use the cloud, up from 59% in 2021 and 53% in 2020.
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In the same survey, \u2018light\u2019 cloud usage has dropped from 19% in 2020 to 14% in 2022, suggesting that more organisations are incorporating more cloud-based services.
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Increasingly complex cloud use means organisations employ additional measures to manage their services. Enterprise-size organisations (with more than 10,000 employees) are unsurprisingly more likely to use these tools than other companies. 41% of enterprises employ multi-cloud security tools, above the average of 32% of all organisations. In addition, 37% of enterprises use multi-cloud cost management tools, compared to 31% when looking at all organisations.
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End-user spending on public cloud services is expected to reach nearly $600 billion in 2023. A third of this spending is predicted to be on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), at $208 billion, followed by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) at $156.2 billion and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) at $136.4 billion.
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Optimisation of cloud use is becoming a greater priority for businesses. 52% of respondents in a survey of 1000 professionals said that cloud cost optimisation was more of a priority in 2022 compared to previous years. Even those with a ‘strong culture of cost and ownership’ aren’t always on top of how much their business spends on the cloud. 46% believed their cloud costs were about where they should be, meaning more than half (54%) weren’t spending efficiently.
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For businesses that didn’t have their engineering departments take control of cloud costs, their view on spending efficiency was even lower –\u00a0 just 32% thought cloud costs were where they should be.
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Operator and vendor revenues for main public cloud and infrastructure services hit $544 billion in 2022, growing 21% from 2021. IaaS and PaaS experienced the largest growth (29%) over the year, accounting for $195 billion of total revenues.
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Cloud security in business
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Security is a critical consideration for businesses looking to enter the cloud. Up to 45% of data breaches occur in the cloud, with higher costs for those who hadn’t developed a proper cloud security plan. The average cost of a data breach for those organisations was $4.59 million. Those organisations with well-established cloud security saved an average of over $700 million, with breaches costing $3.87 million.
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The global cloud security software market was valued at $29.5 billion in 2020. By 2026, the market is expected to be worth $37 billion.
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Personal Cloud Statistics
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The cloud isn’t just used by businesses. Personal clouds and SaaS are used to provide remote storage and services for consumers, including streaming services. Billions across the world use personal clouds like Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive to store documents, pictures, videos and other files.
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In 2020, an estimated 2.3 billion people were using personal clouds.
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In 2018, around 850 million people were using iCloud, of which 170 million used a paid plan.
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In 2018, Google Drive had around 1 billion users, as well as 800 million daily active users.
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Dropbox has over 700 million registered users globally.
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A 2020 survey indicated that 71% of people in the US use a cloud storage service.
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40% use Google Drive.
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33% use iCloud.
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20% use OneDrive.
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The most popular use for personal cloud storage is photos, with 71% of users storing this data type in the cloud. 53% use personal clouds for backups, while 41% use this storage for music and videos.
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Global Cloud Computing Statistics
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Europe
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IT and business services in the EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) generated an estimated $350 billion in 2022. In 2023 revenues are expected to reach around $360 billion.
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The cloud computing market in Europe was worth $63 billion in 2021.
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Over half of European organisations (58%) in a survey said their cloud usage is \u2018heavy\u2019, compared to the 63% global average.
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65% said their cloud usage was higher than planned, which in part may be due to the pandemic accelerating cloud adoption.
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Assessing technical feasibility is the biggest challenge in cloud migration for European organisations, with 51% seeing this as a barrier to adoption. Other challenges include understanding application dependencies (49%) and assessing on-premises vs. cloud costs (44%).
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The top cloud priority for European organisations is migrating more workloads to the cloud, with 69% looking to initiate these moves. Closely following that is optimising existing cloud use (68%) and progressing on a cloud-first strategy (47%).
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North America
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In 2019, the cloud computing market in the US had revenues of $92.4 billion. Of this, 61.3% was generated through the SaaS segment, amounting to $56.6 billion.
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37% of organisations in the US have failed an audit or experienced a cloud data breach in the last year.
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In healthcare, the cloud market share is expected to increase by $25.54 billion between 2020-2025. The US is driving this increase, with cloud computing in healthcare expected to grow by 40%.
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South America
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The compounded annual growth rate of cloud computing services in South America was 22.4% between 2019 and 2023. PaaS experienced greater growth of 30.1% during the same period.
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Argentina\u2019s IT market was valued at $10.18 billion in 2021 and is forecast to grow with a CAGR of 8.1% to reach $15.03 billion by 2026. In this period, SaaS is expected to be the largest service segment of the IT market.
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Latin American cloud storage services were valued at around $2.3 billion in 2021. This is expected to reach $145 billion by 2026, the growth driven by greater data demands by businesses and the growing benefits of cloud computing over traditional storage methods.
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Africa
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In 2021, 70% of Nigerian government agencies hosted data abroad, in countries like the UK, USA and Ukraine.
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There are an estimated 643 technology hubs on the continent, with the greatest number in Nigeria (90), followed by South Africa (78) and Egypt (56).
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The cloud, virtualisation and the evolution towards serverless computing are estimated to generate around $2 billion in top-line revenue for African markets by 2024.
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While the African continent is behind the East and West in technological power, investments in recent years are closing the gap.
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As of 2018, less than 1% of global public cloud spend was generated in Africa. However, the opportunity for growth is there – enterprise and wholesale markets on the continent are worth more than $10 billion, with over 400 companies generating more than $50 million in annual sales.
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In 2019, Microsoft launched an \u2018African Development Centre\u2019, costing around $100 million, with offices in Kenya and Nigeria. This follows Azure launching its first data centres on the continent in March 2019, in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Azure customers include Nedbank (one of South Africa\u2019s largest banks) and the eThekwini water utility.
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AWS launched its first data centre in Africa at the start of 2020, in Cape Town. Huawei has also launched public cloud services in Africa.
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Asia-Pacific
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In China, cloud infrastructure expenditure reached $7.8 billion in Q3 2022, growing 8% YoY and accounting for 12% of global cloud spend for the quarter.
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China\u2019s annual cloud growth rate has decreased for the third successive quarter, dropping below 10% for the first time.
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China\u2019s top 4 cloud vendors (Alibaba Cloud – 36%, Huawei Cloud – 19%, Tencent Cloud – 16%, Baidu AI Cloud – 9%) account for 80% of cloud spend in the country.
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87% of Australian infrastructure decision-makers use at least one type of cloud service – 70% use hybrid clouds and 59% use multiple public clouds.
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91% of Indian infrastructure decision-makers use at least one type of cloud service.
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Cloud revenue in Asia is expected to reach $225.55 billion by 2027.
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The Asian-Pacific public cloud market is expected to grow at a CAGR rate of 26.4% until 2026. This equates to growth from $51.2 billion in 2021 to $165.2 billion in 2026.
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China is one of the largest markets in the Asia-Pacific region. As Google is heavily restricted in the country, the largest cloud service providers are native to China, including Huawei and Alibaba.
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Public cloud revenue in China is predicted to reach $54.25 billion in 2023, with the average spend per employee hitting $68.25.
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The Asia-Pacific region contains 37% of the world’s cloud data centres, with expansion planned in markets like Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. In Q3 of 2022, Google announced new cloud centres in Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand.
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UK Cloud Computing Statistics
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46% of the UK population use cloud storage in some capacity.
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The 2022 cloud market size in the UK is estimated at \u00a341 billion ($48.5 billion), which is forecasted to grow to \u00a359 billion ($69.9 billion) by 2024.
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Public cloud revenue in the UK is $15.57 billion. This is predicted to hit $20.03 billion in 2023.
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The largest segment of the public cloud sector in the UK is Software-as-a-Service. In 2023, SaaS is projected to have a market volume of $12.66 billion.
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Companies are expected to spend an average of $565.50 per employee on cloud services in 2023.
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36% of organisations have failed an audit or experienced a cloud data breach in the last year.
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Amazon Web Services
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First launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has grown into the largest cloud provider globally. The first service AWS launched was its S3 Simple Storage Service, enabling consumers to store information in the cloud. This was followed later the same year with EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud, providing computer resources over the internet.
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Since 2006, AWS has grown to offer over 200 services in the cloud, including machine learning and AI.
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In Q3 2022, AWS accounted for 32% of global cloud spending – more than its closest competitors, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, combined (31%).
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AWS now has deals supplying companies like Boeing, as well as partnerships in sports. For instance,\u00a0 in football, the Bundesliga now uses AWS for \u2018Match Facts\u2019, giving fans deeper insights into action on the pitch.
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In 2022, AWS launched its first 16 \u2018Local Zones\u2019 in the US. It has plans to launch these Zones in 32 metropolitan areas in 26 countries. From Amazon\u2019s website, these Local Zones \u2018enable AWS customers to build applications that deliver single-digit millisecond latency performance at the edge of the cloud to hundreds of millions of people worldwide\u2019. This expands AWS’s availability beyond its current 84 availability zones in 26 geographic regions.
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Amazon Web Services Statistics
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AWS has grown 34% annually over the last 2 years.
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The cloud service experienced 37% growth YoY in Q1 of 2022.
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In Q4 2022, AWS sales grew 20% YoY to $21.4 billion.
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In January 2023, AWS announced a second infrastructure region in Australia. This is estimated to support an average of over 2500 full-time jobs annually. AWS is planning to invest $4.5 billion in Australia by 2037.
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Microsoft Azure
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Microsoft Azure was first announced in 2008, and launched its first services in 2010. First called Windows Azure, the platform was positioned as a rival to Amazon’s fledging EC2 services and became commercially available in February 2010.
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Windows Azure was rebranded as Microsoft Azure in 2014. The platform now offers over 600 cloud services, including virtual machines that now run on cloud-native Ampere processors, AI services and machine learning.
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Microsoft Azure serves millions of customers worldwide, both businesses and individuals. In the UK, surgeons in Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust use Azure Machine Learning and the Responsible AI dashboard to help build individualised patient risk profiles.
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This particular Trust serves around 500,000 people. Like in many hospitals across the globe, considerable pressure has been put on doctors as surgery backlogs grew due to Covid-19. Traditional risk assessment methods meant that doctors could be analysing data sets of as many as 400,000 patients.
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Inputting over 220 parameters into an Azure-powered machine learning model, this Trust has been able to glean deeper insights about factors affecting surgery success.
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With access to more information, doctors can better advise their patients on surgery options and place them at the appropriate facilities that cater to their risk profile. With one hospital reportedly having a waiting list of more than 10,000 patients, Azure’s AI-powered systems can help identify patients that could be treated at a lower-specification facility, reducing waiting list times for both lower and higher-risk patients.
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Microsoft Azure Statistics
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Microsoft\u2019s cloud revenue in Q3 2022 (financial year Q1 2023) was $25.7 billion – up 24% YoY.
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In the same quarter:\n
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Revenue in Intelligent Cloud increased 20% to $20.3 billion.
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Server products and cloud services revenue increased 22%.
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Azure and other cloud services grew by 35%.
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In 2020, 63% of organisations were running applications through Microsoft Azure.
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In 2020, Microsoft 365 had an 87.5% market share for productivity suites.
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Google Cloud Platform
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Google’s first cloud service was its App Engine, which launched in 2011. The App Engine provided resources for developing web applications and hosted them in Google data centres.
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Google Cloud now incorporates the Google Cloud Platform (which provides public cloud infrastructure), Google Workspace (formerly G-Suite, containing Google Drive, Gmail, Meet, Calendar and other tools), as well as machine learning APIs and enterprise versions of Android and ChromeOS. More than 100 services are currently available in Google Cloud.
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Google Cloud Platform Statistics
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Google Cloud had revenue of $6.87 billion in Q3 2022, up YoY from $4.99 billion.
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In Q4 2022, Google Cloud revenue hit $7.32 billion – a 32% YoY increase.
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Google Cloud nearly doubled its market share between 2017-2022, from 6% to 11%.
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In 2021, Google Cloud generated $19 billion in revenue, accounting for around 7% of Google\u2019s total 2021 revenue of $256.74 billion.
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As of January 2023, Google Cloud hosts more than 1.42 million websites, including companies like Spotify.
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Google Workspace had 6 million paying customers in 2020.
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Google Workspace had just 10.5% of the productivity market share in 2020. Microsoft 365 dominated the productivity market, with an 87.5% market share.
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FAQ
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What is cloud computing?
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Cloud computing delivers on-demand IT resources over the internet.
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Maintaining on-site databases, servers, and other IT infrastructure is expensive – maintenance, updates, and expansions all eat into budgets. Cloud providers host the necessary infrastructure remotely, renting these resources on pay-as-you-go or fixed-rate plans. For instance, a single server could provide storage for multiple organisations, reducing the cost for those organisations as they share resources rather than each paying for their own on-site server.
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Cloud computing also provides convenience. Scaling resources depending on workloads or adding new services can happen faster through the cloud than installing additional infrastructure or network resources on-site. In the cloud, organisations are agile and able to respond quickly to changes in their market or within their workforce.
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How many millions of cloud users are there worldwide?
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There are 3.6 billion cloud users worldwide.
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In 2018, approximately 3.6 billion people globally used at least one consumer cloud service.
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Who are the biggest cloud service providers?
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The biggest cloud service providers are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
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AWS, Azure and Google Cloud collectively accounted for 66% of global cloud spend at the end of 2022.
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What is PaaS in cloud computing?
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PaaS stands for \u2018Platform-as-a-Service\u2019.
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This type of cloud computing gives consumers (usually businesses or developers) a complete cloud platform, including hardware, software and other infrastructure, to develop, manage and run applications.
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From databases to storage to development tools, everything is hosted by the cloud service provider, which is rented in packages. Consumers can choose to \u2018pay-as-you-go\u2019 for flexible pricing based on the resources they use. Alternatively, they can pay a fixed price for a set number of users or amount of resources.
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PaaS allows developers to build, test and run applications quickly and in a cost-effective way, which may not be possible if they have to build and host their own on-premise platform.
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What is IaaS in cloud computing?
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IaaS stands for Infrastructure-as-a-Service.
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IaaS offers essential computing resources on demand. Customers can rent storage and servers, networking and data centres, adding and removing resources as needed.
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IaaS is not a complete \u2018traditional\u2019 computing substitute – customers still have to install and configure their own operating systems and applications. However, the underlying infrastructure can all be outsourced with IaaS, removing the need for expensive on-site solutions.
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This gives customers the freedom to add additional resources quickly and efficiently, or easily remove services they no longer need. IaaS is typically provided as a pay-as-you-go package, meaning customers only pay for the resources they use.
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What is SaaS in cloud computing?
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SaaS stands for \u2018Software-as-a-Service\u2019.
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SaaS delivers applications over the internet, meaning customers don\u2019t need to worry about installing and maintaining applications on individual computers.
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SaaS operates on a subscription model, with the provider maintaining the application and all customers sharing the same code base and infrastructure. The centrally maintained infrastructure and code mean that providers can easily roll out updates and new features, whereas once they had to maintain multiple versions of outdated code.
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The main advantage of SaaS is that applications can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, opening up new opportunities for collaborative work, and supporting remote or hybrid work environments.
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Where is data stored in cloud computing?
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Cloud-based data is stored remotely, typically in servers managed by a cloud service provider. People or businesses then access their data through the internet.
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Data is normally stored locally, either in a computer on a hard drive disk (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD), or in local servers.
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Cloud service providers use data centres to house their servers, which then provide storage for consumers. Region-specific restrictions, like the EU’s GDPR law, mean that servers may need to be in a certain location and the appropriate safeguards put in place.
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For instance, Google has data centres across the globe. This includes their European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, which cost around $575 million, and at least 14 locations in the US.
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What is FaaS in cloud computing?
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FaaS stands for Function-as-a-Service.
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FaaS is a subsection of serverless computing. FaaS allows consumers to develop, run and manage application functions without needing to build or maintain any infrastructure associated with application management. A popular use for FaaS is building microservice applications.
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While FaaS sounds similar to PaaS, they have some key differences. PaaS provides a full platform for building an application, including databases, servers, DevOps tools and load balancing. However, with FaaS, you need to use a framework for deployment and scalability – the cloud service provider doesn\u2019t handle this. As such, PaaS is helpful for developing software, while FaaS is better suited for running code in response to events or requests.
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What is the difference between cloud storage and cloud computing?
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Cloud storage and cloud computing differ in the type of resource provided over the internet.
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Cloud storage is one of the most straightforward applications of cloud technology – it allows you to store data in the cloud. Dropbox, Google Drive and Apple iCloud are all examples of cloud storage.
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Cloud computing is more complicated. Cloud computing involves any computer resources provided over the internet. This can include software, networking, operating systems and other infrastructure. The most common types of cloud computing are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Serverless.
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What is cloud adoption?
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Cloud adoption refers to the process undertaken by organisations to migrate data to the cloud and incorporate cloud-based services into their operations.
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The level of cloud adoption differs depending on the organisation – some may only use the cloud for remote data backup. Some are more involved, hosting software over the internet or migrating their infrastructure into the cloud.
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What percentage of companies use cloud services?
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98% of companies globally use the cloud in some way, including SaaS services and cloud storage.
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As the cloud becomes more powerful, it is expected that more businesses will start using these services.
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Which cloud service provider uses solid-state storage?
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Most cloud service providers will offer Solid-State Drive (SSD) storage in some capacity.
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For instance, Microsoft Azure offers several ‘Managed Disks’ storage options for its Azure Virtual Machines and Azure VMware packages. These options include standard HDD storage, as well as ‘Standard SSD’, ‘Premium SSD’ and ‘Ultra Disk Storage’.
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Sources:
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Synergy Research Group, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, IDC, Canalys, Statista, Fortune Business Insights, Gartner, Flexera, Mintel, Forbes, Cybersecurity Ventures, Xalam Analytics, Connecting Africa, The Guardian (Nigerian), International Finance, N6 Host, World Wide Worx, Technavio, Dropbox, CNBC, The Verge, Market Research, Thales, GlobalData, IBM, CNBC, CloudZero, Forrester, Amazon, Check Point, HG Insights, McKinsey
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\nDownload our free guide: Cyber Security Threats for Business in 2024\n
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\nDiscover how to protect your business with our simple 10 step by step guide.\n
Copilot is the new AI assistant that promises to unlock greater efficiency and productivity in the workplace. However, businesses must be aware of the risks before implementing this tool. Read on to discover the cyber security risks of Copilot. Read More
Copilot is the new AI assistant that's set to revolutionise the workplace. Find out the Microsoft 365 Copilot release date here. Read More
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\nThe technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.\n
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\nThe technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.\nThe technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.\n
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\nThe technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.\n
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Wonderful article. Very insightful. I would have loved a bit of coverage of RDS (Remote Database Service) that is the core to many businesses. Also, an on-premise licensing cost of Microsoft’s SQLServer could easily be around $15,000 to run on a single core. When you work with a cloud provider, these licensing issues are bundled into the fee that you pay them. Usually works out to be very economical.
\nKeep them coming.
\nGreat article and information. Can ou include the data on market share from 2019 to 2020 as well, so that we can see the trends in growth rate for the providers ?
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