Research firm Canalys has revealed the share of the top four cloud infrastructure vendors last year and the role of channel presence in their growth.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the market leader with 32 percent in the cloud infrastructure business. Microsoft Azure has 17 percent share in the worldwide cloud infrastructure space. Google Cloud has 8 percent and Alibaba Cloud has 4 percent in the cloud infrastructure market.
Cloud infrastructure services spending rose 46 percent in 2018 to more than $80 billion plus, the report said on Tuesday. Cloud infrastructure service spending is forecast to surpass $143 billion in 2020.
Google Cloud was the fastest-growing cloud infrastructure vendor of the top four, up more than 90 percent year on year, and increasing its share of the total market from 6 percent in 2017 to 8 percent in 2018.
Canalys estimates 30 percent of cloud infrastructure services spend, just over US$24 billion, went through the IT channel of distributors, resellers, service providers and systems integrators in 2018.
“Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud are increasing channel investment to raise their profiles, as competition for enterprise customers increases and workload cloud migration diversifies,” said Alastair Edwards, chief analyst at Canalys.
Canalys estimates the top three providers represented 65 percent or $16 billion of the channel’s total cloud infrastructure services business in 2018, with Microsoft currently the most important.
Microsoft manages one of the largest channel ecosystems in the technology sector and its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program is the most mature among the cloud titans. Approximately 74 percent of revenue from Azure is estimated to come via its partners, which is by far the highest percentage in the sector.
AWS’ channel business accounts for around 15 percent, though its reach is growing rapidly, AWS having recruited over 35,000 partners to date, with hundreds a month wanting to join its partner program.
Canalys estimates that Google Cloud’s channel business accounts for just over 25 percent of its $7 billion cloud infrastructure revenue.
An estimated 13,000 partners have joined the channel partner program of Google Cloud. Out of this, just over 100 have achieved the highest-tier Premier Partner status, while less than a third of those have achieved a Specialization Partner designation.
