Microsoft, Google Gain Ground On AWS

Interesting times. While AWS still remains the leader of the cloud world, companies like Microsoft and Google continue to make solid gains on the platform, keeping up the heat.

Amazon Web Services reported excellent revenues this past quarter.

But so did Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud Platform.

The two competing cloud providers reporting surges of 90% and 76% respectively. This compared to the 42% growth achieved by Amazon Web Services year on year, has both vendors catching up nicely in an industry that continues to grow.

Ultimately, the big three are racing away from the competition, with no signs of slowing down.

According to Canalys, the market research firm, the worldwide cloud infrastructure services market put up a strong performance during the quarter, posting growth of 43% year on year, to reach revenue highs of $14.4 billion.

IBM also benefited from this traction, driven by its strong base of large global customers.

This means that the four largest cloud service providers all maintained their momentum, and in the process expanded their combined share to 57% of the total market. They are quickly reaching critical mass where it will be impossible to dethrone them.

As Canalys research analyst Daniel Liu put.

“The leading cloud service providers’ hyper-scale investment in both technical capabilities and geographic coverage continues to help them expand rapidly. AWS will continue to benefit from its first-mover advantage, broadest cloud services portfolio and strong awareness among developers.

But Microsoft’s substantial growth, driven by its huge enterprise installed base, compatibility with its Office portfolio and enhanced hybrid cloud solutions, means it will remain AWS’ closest competitor.”

According to the analyst, the growing adoption of cloud for digital workloads now revolves around a few key areas. Areas like artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, as well as edge computing.

These are the side of the market that have the potential to catalyze the next wave of growth.