Thanks to the development of AI technology, the cloud computing industry is accelerating again.
According to Synergy Research, data showsGlobal enterprises spent $74 billion on cloud computing in the fourth quarter of 2023, up $5.6 billion sequentially and at a record quarter-over-quarter growth rateThe cloud computing market size increased by 19% compared to 2022.
The cloud market continues to grow strongly in all regions of the world. Look at the sub-region,Growth was strongest in the Asia-Pacific regionIndia, China, Australia and Japan all have annual growth rates of more than 20%; The U.S. remains by far the largest cloud market, which is larger than the entire Asia-Pacific region, grew by 16% in the fourth quarter.
Synergy estimates that global cloud computing industry revenue was $73.7 billion in the fourth quarter, and full-year revenue in 2023 will reach $270 billion.
According to John Dinsdale, an analyst at Synergy, the market will continue to grow with the help of AI.
dinsdale said
"Cloud computing is a big market and it takes a lot of effort to get ahead, but AI has done that. ”However, dinsdale also said that as the growth rate stabilizes,Cloud computing spending will also grow significantly year over year
"Going forward, the law of big data**, the cloud computing market will never return to the pre-2022 growth rate, but the growth rate will indeed stabilize from now on, resulting in a sustained and substantial increase in cloud spending every year. ”Other analysts have similarly pointed out that growth rates are likely to decline. Jamin Ball, a partner at Altimeter Capital, wrote:
"The giants are really starting to see the smooth growth of new workloads offsetting and outpacing the headwinds from previous cloud optimizations. ”This means that the giants' advantages in AI and other aspects may have peaked in their contribution to the growth of cloud computing business. But it doesn't seem to matter to the industry whether it grows or not, and more importantly, who will come out on top in this race?Large enterprises benefit from scale, distribution, credibility, and deep customer relationships over other companies, and AI revenues (primarily compute) will emerge earlier in these companies. ”
At the moment,Microsoft, Amazon, and Google dominate the cloud computing market
Synergy's data shows that although it fell by 2 percentage points month-on-month, Amazon still topped the list with a market share of 31%; Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI has helped Microsoft strive for the top, with its market share increasing by 2% to 25% quarter-on-quarter in the fourth quarter. Google's market share is stable at around 11%.
These three companies have a whopping 67% market shareIf the cloud computing business revenue, which is not included in the financial report, is also included, the total cloud computing revenue of the three in the quarter is about $50 billion: Amazon is $23 billion, Microsoft is $18.5 billion, and Google is about $8 billion.
In terms of quarterly growth, Amazon's AWS cloud services revenue increased by 13%, Microsoft's Azure cloud computing business revenue increased by 30%, and Google Cloud business revenue increased by about 25%.
There is a view that after reaching a partnership with openai last year,Microsoft is already leading the way in artificial intelligence and could overtake Amazon as a potential winner in the cloud computing market
Scott Raney, a partner at Redpoint, said in December: "What Microsoft has done around Copilot means is that they're 100% catching up [with Amazon]." ”