Amazon, Microsoft, Google Own 76 Percent Of US Cloud Market

AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft are dominating America’s cloud services market as some governments begin to investigate the three cloud leaders’ market dominance.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google collectively own a whopping 76 percent of the enterprise cloud services market in the United States, a figure that continues to gradually increase, according to IT market research firm Synergy Research Group.

American enterprises’ annual spend on cloud infrastructure services is now approaching a significant milestone, said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.

“U.S. spending on cloud services is now approaching a $100 billion annual run rate and continues to grow by 30 percent per year, which is pretty unusual for such a large IT market,” Dinsdale told CRN via email, adding that enterprises spent approximately $23 billion on cloud services in the third quarter of 2022.

[Related: AWS Vs. Microsoft Vs. Google Cloud Q3 2022 Earnings Face-Off]

Over the past 14 quarters, the U.S. year-over-year growth rate for cloud services has been between 27 percent to 34 percent.

This massive growth is being led by Microsoft, Amazon’s cloud business—Amazon Web Services (AWS)—and Google’s cloud arm Google Cloud.

On a worldwide basis, these three cloud hyperscalers combined for 66 percent share of the global enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services, which exceeded $57 billion during the third quarter of 2022.

However, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft’s market share dominance is now being heavily scrutinized.

UK Probing AWS, Google, Microsoft’s Cloud Dominance

In September, the U.K.’s communications regulator unveiled it will investigate AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud’s stronghold on the market.

In the U.K., the three cloud leaders combined for more than 80 percent of total revenues in the U.K. public cloud infrastructure services market.

If the investigation leads to competitive concerns, Ofcom—the British regulator conducting the study—could make recommendations to the British government to change regulations or take competitive or consumer enforcement actions.

“Ofcom is to examine the position of Amazon, Microsoft and Google in cloud services, as part of a new programme of work to ensure that digital communications markets are working well for people and businesses in the UK,” Ofcom said in a statement. “If competition concerns are identified it could lead to further action.”

AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Market Share

AWS is the worldwide enterprise cloud services market leader, owning 34 percent share of the global market as of third quarter 2022, according to data from Synergy Research Group.

Microsoft won 21 percent share of the global cloud services market in the third quarter, followed by Google Cloud at 11 percent share.

All three cloud leaders reported quarterly financial results last month.

Seattle-based AWS generated $20.5 billion in sales, up from $16.1 billion year over year.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Cloud reported total sales of $6.9 billion, an increase from $5 billion year over year.

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft doesn’t break out its cloud business as a standalone business group and has yet to provides exact dollar figures for its flagship Azure cloud offering. Instead, Microsoft wraps Azure and other cloud services inside the company’s “Intelligent Cloud” segment. Microsoft’s intelligent cloud segment generated $20.3 billion in revenue, up from $16.9 billion year over year.

Synergy Research Group estimates over the trailing 12 months, revenues from cloud infrastructure services—including Infrastructure as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform as-a-service (PaaS), and hosted private cloud services—reached $217 billion on a global basis.

Synergy’s Dinsdale predicts that cloud services sales will continue to “show strong growth” over the next five years.