Microsoft is narrowing the gap between itself and longtime cloud market share leader Amazon Web Services as Google continues to report stellar cloud services growth.
“There has been some angst about declining cloud growth rates, but the Q1 worldwide market value grew by more than $10 billion year over year,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at IT market research firm Synergy Research Group, who has released first quarter 2023 worldwide cloud market share data for cloud infrastructure services.
Dinsdale, in an email to CRN, said the relatively weak economy has caused some enterprises to review spending more closely on cloud services, but the market continues to increase despite those challenges.
“As the market continues to grow, Amazon, Microsoft and Google continue to account for a large share of cloud spending—their combined share stood at 65 percent in the first quarter,” he said. Microsoft and Google had a stronger year-on-year growth compared to AWS, resulting in both increasing their global market share by upwards of 1-percentage point year over year.
[Related: Google Launches ‘Biggest’ Cloud Migration Program Ever: 6 Key Things To Know]
Cloud Services Market Q1 2023: $63 Billion
Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services reached $63.7 billion in first quarter 2023, according to data from Synergy Research Group. This represents total cloud computing services sales growth of 20 percent, or over $10 billion, year over year compared to first quarter 2022.
Sequentially, first quarter 2023 cloud services grew four percent compared to four quarter 2022. This shows that despite the economic climate which has constrained some growth in cloud spending for enterprises, the market continues to expand at a healthy rate.
“The law of large numbers pretty much dictates that growth rates must decline, but in absolute terms the market continues to grow at a healthy rate, driven by the fundamental benefits of cloud adoption,” said Dinsdale.
CRN breaks down Q1 2023 market share numbers from Amazon, led by Amazon Web Services (AWS); Google, which owns Google Cloud; and Microsoft as well as IBM, Alibaba, Salesforce and Oracle’s cloud market share.
