Cloud provider research has repeatedly named Amazon Web Services (AWS), the dominant cloud provider, for many years. This position was relentlessly pursued by No. 2 Microsoft Azure. This is still true, but a recent report from Canalys claims that the gap has closed.
The firm’s Q2 2018 cloud infrastructure report noted that AWS accounts for 31 per cent of the total market. It also grew 48 per cent during the quarter. Azure cloud closed in.
The report focuses on Microsoft’s cloud offering and states that it has closed the gap in market share, with an 18% share compared to 14 percent in the same time period a year earlier. Google Cloud Platform, however, grew at a faster rate of 108 percent but still holds 8 percent of the global market share.
[Click on the image to see a larger version.] Canalys reported that total cloud infrastructure spending reached $20 billion in quarter three. This is a rise in hybrid IT approaches with mixed public cloud/private clouds and on-premises implementations. Candefero’s recent research showed that only 6 percent of channel partners have all their infrastructure in public cloud.
Canalys Research Analyst Daniel Liu stated that hybrid IT is the dominant approach of businesses. He said that 75 percent of channel partners surveyed indicated that hybrid IT was the preferred approach. This means that most customers are using a combination private and public cloud computing. “Businesses are looking at ongoing costs and usage rates for the best options to suit their workloads. This will lead to some remaining on-premises, others moving to public cloud providers, and some returning to private clouds.
