This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to IT people in the know, but new research data released Aug. 1 from Synergy Research Group shows that Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM and Google combined control well more than half of the worldwide cloud infrastructure service market.
Breaking that data point down, AWS all by itself comprises almost three times the marketshare of its nearest competitor and commands a clear lead in all major regions and most segments of the market.
[Note: To see a larger view of the chart at left, right-click on the image and select “View Image.”]
The Big Four also continue to grow more rapidly than their competitors. In aggregate, the big four grew their cloud infrastructure service revenues 68 percent in Q2 2016, while the next 20 largest cloud providers grew by 41 percent. All the other providers grew by 27 percent.
In total, the numbers show one major uber-trend: Cloud infrastructure services are growing at a frighteningly fast rate.
Amazon in a League of Its Own
While Amazon sails way ahead of the crowd, Microsoft and Google also can point to substantially higher growth rates. IBM, a bit late to this market segment, continues to compete well due to its longtime leadership in the hosted private-cloud segment.
Overall, the market as a whole grew by 51 percent in Q2 alone.
With most of the major operators having now released their earnings data for Q2, Synergy estimated that quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (including IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud) have now reached the $8 billion milestone, while trailing 12-month revenues are close to $28 billion.
North America continues to account for more than half of the worldwide market. The EMEA and APAC regions are similar in size, though APAC has a somewhat higher growth rate.
“In a variety of ways Amazon and the other big three players have distanced themselves from the competition in this market and continue to widen the gap,” Synergy Chief Analyst and Research Director John Dinsdale said.
Global Presences Set Big Four Apart
“What marks them out as different is their global presence, marketing muscle, ability to fund huge investments in hyperscale data centers and, in most cases, a determination to succeed in the market.”
The ranking of the next 20 largest cloud providers features some interesting companies, Dinsdale said, with Alibaba and Oracle growing particularly well. However, they are all a long way behind Google, which is itself growing 162 percent per year, yet it remains only one-sixth the size of Amazon.
Reno, Nev.-based Synergy provides quarterly market sizing and segmentation data on cloud and related markets, including company revenues by segment and by region.