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.
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.
Thanks for the update Robin. Last year I heard that AWS were bigger than all their competitors combined with no signs of that changing. Looks like they’re still going to be dominant with all the new partnerships they’ve been forging recently, but maybe not quite so dominant.