INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Amazon, Microsoft and Google are often referred to as the Big 3 in the cloud infrastructure market, and if you had any doubt about the
growth potential of the cloud, take a look at this quarter eye-popping revenue numbers from these three companies, which reached almost $22
billion this earnings season.
Before we get into each company specific numbers, it important to note that it difficult to get a firm grip on
what the cloud numbers actually mean and what each company includes in that cloud revenue category
What more, Google didn&t even report specific cloud revenue this quarter, so we are left to rely on comments from July.
It also important
to note that we are talking about the cloud infrastructure, not SaaS revenue, so Microsoft earned additional money from their SaaS
business, but Google combines SaaS and infrastructure into a single number.
That said, we have a rough idea and we know the market is
Consider that based on last year earnings reports that revenue has grown from around $16 billion to around $22 billion in just one year for
In fact, Synergy Research reports that this month the entire market is on a $100 billion run rate for the first time.
AWS
Photo: Budrul
Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Let start with AWS
They have the purest numbers when it comes to the cloud market, and they have the largest chunk of market share by far — most analysts peg
them at around 33% or so, well ahead of any other player on the market.
Amazon reported revenue of almost $9 billion this month, putting it
on a run rate of almost $36 billion
Not bad for a side business for the main Amazon e-commerce site
Amazon overall growth rate dropped from around 45% to around 35%, but as John Dinsdale from Synergy Research points out, that still a good
rate, and it becomes much harder to sustain large growth numbers the bigger you get.
Microsoft
Photo: Budrul Chukrut/SOPA
Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Microsoft had a good week
It reported Intelligent Cloud earnings of around $11 billion, and it was awarded the Pentagon $10 billion, decade-long JEDI cloud contract
The company is in second place in terms of market share, with around 16%.
Like Amazon, Microsoft saw its cloud growth slow a bit, down to
59% compared with 76% a year ago, but it faces a similar challenge to Amazon, even though it has half the market share
It scaling so quickly that it can&t really maintain that growth pace it been on, according to Dinsdale
&To be at the scale that Azure has achieved and to be still growing at around 60% per year is impressive
Sure, the growth rate is nudging down, but that is entirely to be expected for a business that has rapidly grown,& he told TechCrunch.
It
important to point out that Intelligent Cloud includes much more than Azure, including SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, consulting
and support.
Google
Photo: Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Finally we have Google
It has far less market share than Amazon or Microsoft, somewhere around 8%, still in the single digits, but growing fast
The company brought on former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian to replace Diane Greene at the end of last year to help drive growth at the
cloud division.
In July, at the company earnings report, Google CEO Sundar Pichai reported that the company was on an $8 billion run rate,
To put that into perspective, the company cloud revenue had doubled in 18 months
It important to note, however, that figure includes both Google infrastructure services and its commercial SaaS tools like G Suite
It probably ticked up this week, but Google wasn&t sharing specific numbers this time.
While it always been difficult to compare cloud
numbers, we have a good sense of how each of the Big 3 is doing overall
One thing is clear: This is not a fixed pie
The cloud market is still growing rapidly, and all three companies are taking advantage.
AWS remains in firm control of the cloud
