Amazon Web Services’ stronghold over the global cloud market is showing some vulnerability as AWS’ cloud market share dropped 2 points, while Microsoft’s cloud share increased by nearly 2 points year over year during fourth-quarter 2023.
Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services reached $73.7 billion in fourth-quarter 2023, representing a 20 percent increase compared with $61.6 billion in fourth-quarter 2022, according to new data from IT market research firm Synergy Research Group.
“This was a banner quarter for the cloud market,” said John Dinsdale, vice president and chief analyst for Synergy, in an email to CRN. “As the market continues to grow strongly, Amazon, Microsoft and Google still account for a large share of cloud spending—their combined share stood at 67 percent in Q4. Microsoft had reason to be very satisfied, as its market share increased by almost 2 full percentage points to reach a new high.”
Dinsdale said that Google’s share “moved higher while Amazon nudged down.” Amazon remains far ahead of Microsoft, but the gap is closing, CRN takes a look at the top five cloud market-share leaders of fourth-quarter 2023, which included Alibaba, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Salesforce.
Cloud Spending Hits $270 Billion In 2023; Record Q4 Thanks To AI
Before jumping into the exact market-share figures for Alibaba, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce, it is key to know that Q4 2023 was an exceptionally strong quarter for cloud providers as demand from customers surged.
