Microsoft, Google and IBM have all ramped up their cloud and IaaS initiatives over the past year, but Amazon Web Services (AWS) is still on top in the IaaS/PaaS market. Synergy Research Group has released new Q4 data showing that even though its competitors exceeded Amazon’s growth rate in the quarter, the market giant remained the clear leader.
Microsoft and IBM nearly doubled their IaaS/PaaS revenues from the fourth quarter of 2012 to 2013, and that’s no surprise since both companies made massive strides in the cloud and infrastructure services space during that time period. Microsoft has been steadily adding features and partners to its Azure offering, while IBM has had a global cloud focus, announcing major initiatives in China, Europe and Brazil.
Despite those efforts, Amazon managed to grow its revenues by 65 percent while increasing its worldwide market share to more than 30 percent. According to Synergy’s data, the overall IaaS/PaaS market grew by 52 percent, and the company estimates that total IaaS/PaaS revenue for Q4 reached $3 billion. Annual revenues for 2013 were just under $10 billion, while AWS revenues for the year surpassed $3 billion. Amazon took in more than $1 billion in Q4, with a majority of the company’s revenues being derived from their IaaS and PaaS offerings.
"The big three global IT vendors are putting the pedal to the metal on cloud infrastructure services and are rapidly expanding their service footprints and revenues," said John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group. "However, while they are gaining market share it is not at the expense of Amazon. It is doing a very impressive job of maintaining its leadership in this strategically important high-growth market."
According to Synergy, while both IBM and Microsoft have substantial cloud revenues as well, these are largely derived from software, private cloud services, cloud-related hardware products and other professional and technical cloud services.
Google is also shaping up to be a formidable competitor, and the company recently announced a tiered partner program for the Google Cloud Platform. Google also secured a key partnership with Dell to offer its infrastructure platform to Dell partners through the company’s Cloud Partner Program. This opens up the platform to cloud developers for architecting apps and managed and unmanaged services running on Google’s infrastructure, setting the stage for major growth and expansion for the company.
Edited by
Blaise McNamee
