AWS Cloud Share Slips as Competitors Claw at Its Lead

Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains the No. 1 infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) public cloud vendor, according to Gartner’s latest numbers, maintaining a massive lead over the competition in both revenue and market share. But its cloud share dominance is shrinking as Microsoft, Alibaba, and Google apply pressure. The worldwide IaaS market grew 29.5 percent in 2017 to $23.5 billion, up from $18.2 billion in 2016. AWS remained the top vendor in 2017, followed by Microsoft, Alibaba, Google, and IBM. Those five vendors accounted for 75 percent of total IaaS revenues last year. AWS’ revenue jumped 25 percent year over year, reaching an estimated $12.2 billion in 2017. In addition to being the largest IaaS provider, it’s the most mature, enterprise-ready vendor with the strongest track record of customer success and the most useful partner ecosystem, said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner. Its growth in 2017 was driven by customers that are migrating from traditional data centers to the public cloud as well as customers implementing digital business projects like analytics and mobility, he said.