AWS Still Bigger than its Four Main Competitors Combined Despite Surging Growth

RENO, NV, April 27, 2015

New Q1 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains larger than its four main competitors combined in the cloud infrastructure service market. Microsoft can once again lay claim to having by far the highest revenue growth rate and IBM remains the king of the private & hybrid services segment, but AWS continues to grow faster than the market as a whole and its market share crept up to 29% in the quarter. Google is quietly gaining share though it remains just half the size of Microsoft in this market, while Salesforce, once the unquestioned leader in PaaS, rounds out the top five ranked companies. With most of the major operators having now released their earnings data for Q1, Synergy estimates that quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (including IaaS, PaaS and private & hybrid cloud) have now passed the $5 billion milestone, despite revenue growth in the quarter being held back by the strengthening US dollar. Trailing twelve-month revenues now exceed $17 billion with the annual revenue growth rate running at around 45%, though this would be closer to 48% but for the wild fluctuations being seen in exchange rates.

“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 Research Group. “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.”