Q4 earnings are in for the ‘big three’ cloud providers, and you know what that means – it’s time for an AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud market share comparison. Let’s take a look at all three providers side-by-side to see where they stand.
In addition to their extensive use in industries like e-commerce, logistics, and healthcare, cloud services have become increasingly relevant to online gambling operators. Providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer essential infrastructure for hosting, data management, and security, allowing gambling companies to maintain reliability and compliance in a highly regulated environment. With real-time gaming requiring high availability and minimal downtime, these cloud services play a critical role in supporting player account systems, transactional data, and fraud prevention technologies.
For instance, AWS’s scalability has made it a favored choice for some operators who manage spikes in traffic during high-demand periods, such as major sporting events. Similarly, Azure’s emphasis on hybrid solutions enables gambling companies to balance cloud computing with on-premise servers, a feature that proves useful for businesses navigating jurisdictional data regulations. Meanwhile, Google Cloud’s recent advancements in AI and machine learning have opened the door to sophisticated predictive analytics, helping operators detect irregular betting patterns or refine targeted marketing strategies.
AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud Earnings
To get a sense of the AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud market share breakdown, let’s take a look at what each cloud provider’s reports shared.
AWS
Amazon reported Amazon Web Services (AWS) revenue of $9.95 billion for Q4 2019, compared to $7.4 billion for Q4 2019. AWS revenue grew 34% in the quarter, compared to a year earlier. Across the business, Amazon’s quarterly sales increased to $87.4 billion, beating predictions of $86.02 billion.AWS has been a huge contributor to this growth. AWS revenue made up 11% of total Amazon sales for the quarter. AWS only continues to grow, and bolster the retail giant time after time. One thing to keep in mind: you’ll see a couple of headlines pointing out that revenue growth is down, quoting that 34% number and comparing it to previous quarters’ growth rates, which peaked at 81% in 2015. However, that metric is of questionable value as AWS continues to increase revenue at this enormous scale, dominating the market (as we’ll see below).
Azure
While Amazon specifies AWS revenue, Microsoft only reports on Azure’s growth rate. That number is 62% revenue growth over the previous quarter. This time last year, growth was reported at 76%. As mentioned above, comparing growth rates to growth rates is interesting, but not necessarily as useful a metric as actual revenue numbers – which we don’t have for Azure alone. Here are the revenue numbers Microsoft does report. Azure is under the “Intelligent Cloud” business, which grew 27% to $11.9 billion. The operating group also includes server products and cloud services (30% growth) and Enterprise Services (6% growth). The lack of specificity around Azure frustrates many pundits as it simply can’t be compared directly to AWS, and inevitably raises eyebrows about how Azure is really doing. Of course, it also assumes that IaaS is the only piece of “cloud” that’s important, but then, that’s how AWS has grown to dominate the market. A victory for the cloud provider was the October winner of the $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract (although AWS is actively protesting the contract with claims of political interference).
Google Cloud
This quarter, Google broke out revenue reporting for its cloud business for the first time. For the fourth quarter, Google Cloud generated $2.6 billion in revenue, a growth of 53% from the previous year. For 2019 as a whole, Google Cloud brought in $8.9 billion in revenue, which is less than AWS generated in the fourth quarter alone. Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated on the earnings report conference call, “The growth rate of GCP was meaningfully higher than that of Cloud overall, and GCP’s growth rate accelerated from 2018 to 2019.” CFO Ruth Porat also highlighted Google Cloud Anthos, as Google leans into enabling the multi-cloud reality for its customers, something AWS and Azure have avoided.
Cloud Computing Market Share Breakdown – AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud
When we originally published this blog in 2018, we included a market share breakdown from analyst Canalys, which reported AWS in the lead owning about a third of the market, Microsoft in second with about 15 percent, and Google sitting around 5 percent.
In 2019, they reported an overall growth in the cloud infrastructure market of 42%. By provider, AWS had the biggest sales gain with a $2.3 billion YOY increase, but Canalys reported Azure and Google Cloud with bigger percentage increases.
As of February 2020, Canalys reports AWS with 32.4% of the market, Azure at 17.6%, Google Cloud at 6%, Alibaba Cloud close behind at 5.4%, and other clouds with 38.5%
Ultimately, it seems clear that in the case of AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud market share – AWS still has the lead. Bezos has said, “AWS had the unusual advantage of a seven-year head start before facing like-minded competition.
As a result, the AWS services are by far the most evolved and most functionality-rich.” Our anecdotal experience talking to cloud customers often finds that true, and it says something that Microsoft isn’t breaking down their cloud numbers just yet, while Google leans into multi-cloud. AWS remains far in the lead for now. With that said, it will be interesting to see how the actual numbers play out, especially as Alibaba catches up.
