AWS Still Leads in Cloud Infrastructure, But Microsoft, Google Gain

Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains the global leader in public cloud-infrastructure services as overall spending reached $20 billion in the second quarter.

That’s according to a new report by Canalys, the independent analyst company. Cloud-infrastructure services spending was up 47 percent from the same quarter in 2017.

AWS accounted for 31 percent of the total market, growing 48 percent during the quarter. Microsoft Azure continued to grow faster than AWS, increasing by 89 percent and closing the market-share leadership gap, with an 18 percent share against 14 percent the same period a year ago.

Google Cloud maintained momentum and held onto third place, growing 108 percent, to represent 8 percent of the global market share.

Business adoption of public cloud infrastructure services is increasing as new digital applications are developed and existing workloads are migrated, Canalys noted. In a recent global Candefero survey of 264 channel partners, just 6 percent saw their customers take a cloud-first approach, placing everything in the public cloud.

“Hybrid IT is the dominant approach taken by businesses, with three in four (75 percent) channel-partner respondents indicating that most of their customers are adopting a combination of private and public cloud computing,” said Daniel Liu, Canalys research analyst. “Businesses are assessing ongoing public-cloud costs as well as usage rates to determine the best options for their workloads. This will result in some remaining on-premises, some moving to public cloud providers and some returning from public to private clouds.”

Channel partners play a vital role in cutting through the complexity faced by their customers, Liu said.

“The opportunity is in professional services, in terms of consulting, integration and ongoing managed services,” he said. “Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each public-cloud provider, the different tariffs and discounts available, as well as assessing the appropriate placement of workloads is crucial. Partners must provide the tools to secure workload migration and movement, visibility and policy enforcement across multiple environments to ensure cost control and compliance, as well as providing platforms for new digital application development.”