Report: Microsoft Chasing Cloud Leader AWS With 93 Percent Growth Rate

Canalys’ latest quarterly research report shows that Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), is still the market-leading cloud provider. However, Microsoft Azure is growing at a strong 93 percent rate.
Canalys released Q1 2017 numbers and reported that AWS had a 31 percent market share in the cloud infrastructure services market. Although this is slightly lower than the 33.8 percent reported by Canalys in the Q4 2016, it still exceeds the market share of its primary competitor, Microsoft Azure.
However, the Azure cloud is facing greater challenges as its 93 per cent growth rate surpasses AWS’s 43 per cent rate. Google and IBM saw a 74 percent and 38% increase in year-over-year rates, respectively.
Cloud providers are competing for enterprise customers and are looking to the channel as a way to expand their reach, Canalys stated.
[Click on the image to see a larger version.] Azure Chases AWS (source : Canalys). “AWS has a well-established channel program that is growing and is cited as being instrumental in winning key global clients,” the company stated. “Microsoft’s Q1 2017 growth demonstrates the benefits of having a large enterprise client base and converting that to Azure. To provide hybrid solutions to customers, Azure Stack is being used by many of the top enterprise vendors.
Canalys reported that the overall market for cloud infrastructure services grew by 42 per cent year-over-year during Q1 2017, up from the 49 per cent reported in Q4 2016.
The Q4 2016 Report Source : Canalys Jordan De Leon, Canalys analyst, stated that the “Go-to market strategy, which includes both customer and channel partner engagement will ultimately determine vendor success within this segment,” Jordan De Leon, Canalys analyst, said. To spread risk, larger enterprises will adopt multi-cloud strategies. Vendors will need to have deep financial resources in order to challenge AWS.
A number of cloud market research studies, including this one published by Gartner Inc. last month, indicate that the market is becoming a two-horse race. Azure is gaining ground in certain customer segments while showing a faster growth rate. However, it still has a large market share.