The cloud infrastructure services market grew 46 percent to $21 billion in the third quarter of 2018, Canalys research report said.
US-based companies represented six of the top 10 providers. Amazon Web Services (AWS), a part of Amazon.com, is the largest cloud infrastructure services company.
John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, said: “Over the last ten quarters the AWS year-on-year growth rate in these markets has been pretty steady and has averaged just a little under 50 percent.”
AWS revenue grew 45 percent during the third quarter to account for 32 percent of total spend. Market share of Microsoft Azure is 17 percent and Google Cloud is 8 percent in cloud infrastructure services market, the Canalys report said.
Alibaba Cloud, China’s highest ranked provider, was the fourth largest, growing more than 80 percent to account for 4 percent.
US cloud providers are forced to sell data center assets to local Chinese partners under the China Telecommunications Regulation to continue operating in the country.
“US- and China-based cloud infrastructure service providers dominate their respective domestic markets, which is unlikely to change anytime soon in the current political climate,” said Canalys Research Analyst Daniel Liu.
Cloud investment trends
AWS is building data center regions in Sweden and Microsoft Azure in in Norway. Alibaba Cloud will have its second region in Europe, with data centers in London, as well as a greater presence in France and Sweden.
AWS and Microsoft will be building new regions in Bahrain and the UAE to compete with Alibaba, which opened in Dubai in 2016.
Huawei Cloud plans to enter South Africa, where Microsoft is currently growing its presence. Huawei Cloud is launching in Thailand, and Google Cloud is entering Indonesia following Alibaba Cloud’s move earlier in the year.
Synergy Research Group said spend on cloud infrastructure services jumped 45 percent in the third quarter of 2018. Revenue growth at Microsoft, Google and Alibaba again far surpassed overall market growth rate.
IBM market share dropped but remained at over 7 percent, thanks primarily to its leadership in hosted private cloud services.
Synergy estimates that quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (including IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud services) are now well over $17 billion. The Q3 growth rate of 45 percent compares with a full-year 2017 growth rate of 44 percent and a 2016 growth rate of 50 percent.
