Four Giants Ramped Up Dominance Of Cloud Infrastructure Services In Q2

The world's four largest cloud infrastructure providers boosted their combined market dominance last quarter, among their ranks seizing control over more than half the overall market, according to Q2 earnings data compiled by Synergy Research.

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM and Google brought in aggregated revenues of more than $3 billion as the greater Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service and private cloud market inched toward the $6 billion quarterly mark.

"The rest of the market is being left behind. No other company has been able to get close to these four in terms of data center footprint, global presence and market power," said John Dinsdale, Synergy's chief analyst.

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Those same four companies dominated the cloud market two years ago, when cloud infrastructure services was a roughly $2.5 billion market. At the time, they had what now appears a modest combined 41 percent share.

The Big Four further closed the gap in 2014, far outpacing the overall market, which by that point had boomed beyond $3.75 billion in quarterly revenue.

The market expansion continued this year at 33 percent. But the Big Four surged by a staggering 84 percent, giving them control of 54 percent of the market as a whole.

Amazon, the 800-pound gorilla in the cloud, in Q2 of 2015 owned 29 percent of the overall cloud market, up from a not-so-shabby 25 percent in 2014.

Microsoft also improved its already-strong position, growing from 9 percent to 12 percent market share.

IBM, competing on the strength of its hybrid solutions, ran in place, with a 7 percent share this year, just like it had last year.

Finally, Google inched upward, from 5 percent to 6 percent share, according to Synergy.

While the disproportionate influence of those four vendors won't change anytime soon, Dinsdale noted that, because of the rapid overall market expansion, there are abundant growth opportunities for small and medium-size cloud providers.

’Developing the necessary global hyperscale data center infrastructure along with the required marketing and operations support is simply beyond the reach of all but a very small number of players," Dinsdale said.

But for the many smaller providers, he added, there remains "a wealth of opportunity for those that are focused on specific market niches or local geographic areas.’

PUBLISHED JULY 27, 2015