In 2014 Gartner estimated that Amazon Web Services had 5x the utilized compute capacity of the rest of the cloud providers. There’s a couple of qualifiers there – utilized, compute – but as a rough guess, it looked like AWS had around an 80% market share.

But no more. In a recent report Synergy Research Group noted that AWS has a 45% share in IaaS, ≈30% share in PaaS, and is well behind IBM in Managed Private Cloud.

Here’s SRG’s chart:
Synergy_Research_Group

They also report that Microsoft and Google, while smaller in absolute share, are growing much faster than AWS – which is always easier from a smaller base.

The StorageMojo take
It’s rare that a company who grabs an early lead can hang onto it. That’s what made IBM’s domination of the computer industry for decades unusual.

A few years ago it looked like AWS was set for IBM-like dominance of the cloud space. These numbers, if accurate, suggest that AWS days of dominance are numbered.

Further, IBM’s strong showing in private cloud points to the value of a direct sales force. Microsoft is doing a good job leveraging the Windows franchise, but I expect even greater things from Microsoft Research.

Competition is good. The cloud market is getting healthy dose.

Courteous comments welcome, of course.