Global Cloud Market Hits $42B in Q2

Article By : George Leopold

Demand for cloud computing services prompts huge quarterly investments in data center infrastructure.

To get a sense of just how fast the global cloud market is growing, one recent estimate finds that enterprise cloud consumption rose during the second quarter for the fourth consecutive quarter.

That level of annual growth “is unusual for such a large, high-growth market,” notes market tracker Synergy Research Group.

If the trend continues, and other analysts predict there is no reason to believe otherwise, the enterprise cloud market will come to resemble pyrocumulus clouds hovering over the wildfire-ravaged northwest United States.

Synergy Research reported last week that the global cloud market ascended to $42 billion in the second quarter, a $2.7 billion increase over the previous quarter and an impressive 39-percent jump from the same three-month period last year.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Amazon Web Services accounts for fully one-third of global market share, with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud combined accounting for roughly another one-third. The next 20 cloud providers combined for a market share of about 28 percent. Alibaba and Tencent were among the second tier of global cloud providers, reflecting booming demand in China.

“This market continues to be a runaway success story for Amazon, Microsoft, Google and some other cloud providers,” declares John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.

“You would not normally expect to see growth rates actually increasing in such a huge and rapidly developing market, yet once again that is what our research has shown.”

Adds Dinsdale: “It must be said that this success is hard earned. Amazon, Microsoft and Google in aggregate are typically investing over $25 billion in capex per quarter, much of which is going towards building and equipping their fleet of over 340 hyperscale data centers.” Dinsdale reckons continuing cloud market expansion leaves plenty of opportunities for incumbents and new providers alike as online shopping expands and home offices become standard.

Synergy’s estimate of cloud service revenues includes infrastructure and platform services along with hosted private clouds. Infrastructure and platform services account for the lion’s share of quarterly market growth, growing 41 percent during the second quarter.

Enterprise cloud customers continue to embrace a hedging strategy known as multi-cloud as a means of avoiding vendor lock-in within a technology sector dominated by AWS. The multi-cloud approach has benefitted other cloud vendors, Synergy notes, with the top five controlling 80 percent of the public sector.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Other market trackers foresee unlimited growth in cloud demand for the foreseeable future. For example, technology consultant Technavio forecast in June that the global cloud computing market will exceed $287 billion by 2025. That works out to a 17 percent compound annual growth rate.

This article was originally published on EE Times.

George Leopold has written about science and technology from Washington, D.C., since 1986. Besides EE Times, Leopold’s work has appeared in The New York Times, New Scientist, and other publications. He resides in Reston, Va.

 

Virtual Event - PowerUP Asia 2024 is coming (May 21-23, 2024)

Power Semiconductor Innovations Toward Green Goals, Decarbonization and Sustainability

Day 1: GaN and SiC Semiconductors

Day 2: Power Semiconductors in Low- and High-Power Applications

Day 3: Power Semiconductor Packaging Technologies and Renewable Energy

Register to watch 30+ conference speeches and visit booths, download technical whitepapers.

Subscribe to Newsletter

Leave a comment