AWS Still Leading IaaS Space with Microsoft Gaining Revenues
Microsoft, Google and IBM still can’t touch Amazon Web Services (AWS) when it comes to cloud infrastructure services. New findings from Synergy Research Group reveal that AWS remains firmly implanted at the top of the cloud IaaS space, commanding 29 percent of the market as of the first quarter of the year.
Microsoft enjoyed the highest revenue growth during that period while Google is also capturing some market share, but is just half the size of Microsoft. When it comes to private and hybrid services IBM is leading the market, with previous leader Salesforce coming in fifth for platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
"Across the full and varied spectrum of cloud activities there are now six companies that can lay a valid claim to having annual cloud revenue run rates in excess of $5 billion—AWS, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco and Salesforce—and all are able to claim leadership in different parts of the cloud market," said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy. "However, on a strict like-for-like basis AWS remains streets ahead of the competition in cloud infrastructure services. Furthermore, this part of the cloud market is growing much more rapidly than SaaS or cloud infrastructure hardware and software."
In fact, Synergy puts annual cloud IaaS revenues at $17 billion with a growth rate of about 45 percent. Recent findings from 451 Research echo AWS’ dominance from a buyer perspective. The company surveyed more than 1,500 IT professionals throughout the world and found AWS is used by 57 percent of enterprise IaaS customers. Those same customers believe Amazon is the “most important” IaaS provider as well.
But Microsoft Azure certainly has a place in the market, with 42 percent of enterprises adopting the infrastructure offering and naming it the solution they will most likely evaluate for their next IaaS offering. And 20 percent of those customers named Azure “most important” in the IaaS realm.
Synergy also revealed that 34 percent of enterprises surveyed are using hosted private cloud, and Rackspace is leading that area with 20 percent market share. The rest of the private cloud market is notably fragmented, with 52 percent of providers comprised of small players with less than three percent market share each.
Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
