Microsoft, Google up, Amazon flat in Synergy cloud survey
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Microsoft, Google up, Amazon flat in Synergy cloud survey

Synergy cloud survey Feb 2023.jpg

New data from Synergy Research Group shows that fourth-quarter enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services exceeded US$61 billion worldwide.

While this was up by well over $10 billion from the fourth quarter of the previous year, it did reflect a reduction in the market growth rate, says Synergy.

The 21% growth over Q4 of 2021 was again substantially hampered by the historically strong US dollar and a severely restricted Chinese market, says Synergy.

The actual market share numbers for the leading cloud providers are Amazon 33%, Microsoft 23%, Google 11%, Alibaba 5%, IBM 3%, Salesforce 3%, Tencent 2% and Oracle 2%.

But, as the survey (see chart) shows, between 2017 and now Google’s market share has gone up slightly, and Microsoft’s has gone up substantially, while Amazon Web Services has stayed relatively flat.

Meanwhile IBM has shown a long-term decline, while Alibaba is also flat.

Other companies with a market share of 1%, to the nearest percentage point, include Baidu, China Telecom, China Unicom, Huawei, Fujitsu, NTT, Snowflake, SAP and Rackspace, says Synergy.

The quarterly research on cloud infrastructure services covers infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and hosted private cloud.

“Why the reduction in growth rate?” asks Synergy. “There are three main factors. The strengthened US dollar diminishes the apparent growth rate of many non-US markets; the large Chinese market remains constrained by pandemic issues and local policies; and the worsened economy has caused some enterprises to more closely review spending on cloud services.”

Synergy says: “These factors should be primarily short term in nature and Synergy forecasts that growth rates will remain strong over the next few years.” Meanwhile, it adds, “the market continues to consolidate around the three leading global cloud providers. Microsoft in particular had a strong quarter and increased its global market share to 23%, narrowing the gap between it and market leader Amazon”.

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