Amazon is the number one cloud provider, and barring some major and unforeseen market shifts, the company will remain number one for a very long time.
After analyzing the first quarter 2017 financial results of the leading cloud companies, Synergy Research has once again crowned Amazon Web Services the champion. “While AWS remains in a field of its own and is maintaining a steady market share in a rapidly growing cloud market, there is a chasing group of five major cloud providers, each of which is achieving growth rates far higher than AWS,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group, in an email sent to Datamation.
Protecting your company’s data is critical. Cloud storage with automated backup is scalable, flexible and provides peace of mind. Cobalt Iron’s enterprise-grade backup and recovery solution is known for its hands-free automation and reliability, at a lower cost. Cloud backup that just works.
Despite monumental gains by its rivals Microsoft, Google and Alibaba, each of which notched annual growth rates of at least 80 percent, Amazon remains comfortable in the lead. “The law of large numbers almost dictates that AWS growth rate has to moderate, but it does continue to grow at a similar pace to the overall market and is therefore maintaining its overall market position. It remains substantially larger than its next five competitors combined.”
Earlier this week, Amazon reported revenue of $35.7 billion for the first quarter of 2017, a year-over-year gain of 23 percent, and earnings per share of $1.48. AWS sales surged by 43 percent on an annual basis to nearly $3.6 billion.
Cloud sales are also up at IBM. Big Blue recently reported that its cloud revenues had grown 33 percent to $3.5 billion, a 33-percent improvement. “In the first quarter, both the IBM Cloud and our cognitive solutions again grew strongly, which fueled robust performance in our strategic imperatives,” said Ginni Rometty, president and CEO of IBM, in prepared remarks.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced that its Azure cloud revenues had nearly doubled in size (93 percent) during the last quarter. The software giant’s commercial cloud business now has an annual revenue run rate exceeding $15 billion, noted Satya Nadella during an earnings conference call.
All told, Synergy estimates that the cloud infrastructure market, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a services (PaaS) and hosted private cloud, is generated $10 billion is growing annually at 40 percent. Generally, businesses flock to AWS, Microsoft and Google for their IaaS and PaaS needs while IBM is the go-to vendor for hosted private cloud services.
Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.
Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
December 16, 2020
AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
December 11, 2020
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on Datamation and our other data and technology-focused platforms.
Advertise with Us
Property of TechnologyAdvice.
© 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this
site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives
compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products
appear on this site including, for example, the order in which
they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies
or all types of products available in the marketplace.