Microsoft Clouds Pixels Reuse

Through this month, the big three players in the cloud market have dropped financial results regarding their cloud divisions. The big takeaway from the spurt of disclosures is that Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are all thriving and growing.

Perhaps Google Cloud is the standout here as the company confirmed a $8 billion annual revenue for the division. That’s significantly smaller than Azure (at least we think), and massively smaller than AWS, but is shows Google is able to grow alongside those market leaders.

In terms of revenue, AWS still sits on top with $33 billion for the cloud company. Microsoft Azure is a little harder to assess because the company does not offer specifics for the platform. Instead, Azure is bundled in with the wider commercial cloud division for financial purposes.

Still, it seems likely that how much these companies are making from cloud is in direct relation to their market position. With that in mind, Canalys reports AWS held 32.3% of the market during the fourth quarter of 2018. Azure was in second place with 16.5%, while Google Cloud held 9.7% of the market.

What is interesting is all these companies are locked in their position. It is something I have said countless times on these pages and will continue to push it for consistency or until something changes.

Locked In

AWS remains comfortably ahead of Azure as the leading cloud service. Microsoft’s Azure, in turn, remains significantly ahead of GCP in second place. However, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are all thriving within their own market positions. This was highlighted by a recent Gartner report focused on the cloud market.

Google’s ongoing growth would typically put Microsoft on the defensive in another market. However, the unique nature of the top end of the cloud arena means Microsoft is enjoying similar growth. At the same time, Amazon will be largely unconcerned by Microsoft’s growth as it too is growing.

Yes, all companies are most definitely in competition with each other, but each is also able to survive and thrive.