Analyst see intensifying competition beyond Q2 2022 as cloud market keeps growing

Two reports in recent days shed new light on the growth of the cloud market and just how quickly the big three cloud platforms are pulling away from the competition.

With Amazon, Microsoft, and Google now reporting their Q2 earnings, Synergy Research Group reported that in Q2, enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services reached $55 billion. Together, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have a 65 percent market share, they found, up from 61 percent a year ago.

All other cloud service providers have experienced 150 percent growth in revenues even as their relative market share plunged. The cloud market has grown in all regions of the world, with most of the cloud spending focused on public IaaS and PaaS services.

Analysis by research firm Canalys put the revenue shared by the top three cloud service providers at 63% of the $62.3 billion market with annual growth of 42%.

AWS remains the largest cloud service provider, with Azure in second place, growing at 40 percent annually.

“Cloud remains the strong growth segment in tech,” said Canalys VP Alex Smith. “While opportunities abound for providers large and small, the interesting battle remains right at the top between AWS and Microsoft. The race to invest in infrastructure to keep pace with demand will be intense and test the nerves of the companies’ CFOs as both inflation and rising interest rates create cost headwinds.” 

“As the cloud market continues to surge, the biggest story in Q2 was all about macroeconomics rather than actual cloud usage. When country market numbers are aggregated in US dollars, the yearly growth rate dropped by over six percentage points due ...