The global infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market grew 37.3% to $44.5 billion in 2019, the latest statistics from Gartner have revealed, which is up from $32 billion in 2018.
According to the analyst firm's report, Amazon managed to retain its position as the number one IaaS provider with 45% of the market, with Microsoft (17.9%), Alibaba (9.1%), Google (5.3%) and Tencent (2.8%) following behind.
Amazon generated an estimated $20 billion revenue during 2019, leveraging its position as market leader in 2018 to expand its capabilities beyond the IaaS layer in the cloud stack, Gartner explained.
"Cloud underpins the push to digital business, which remains at the top of CIOs' agendas," commented Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner. "It enables technologies such as the edge, AI, machine learning and 5G, among others.
"At the end of the day, each of these technologies require a scalable, elastic and high-capacity infrastructure platform like public cloud IaaS, which is why the market witnessed strong growth.”
Microsoft also maintained its position of second in the market, thanks to the Redmond giant's ability to leverage its sales reach and co-sell its Azure offerings with other Microsoft products and services, Gartner explained. Its IaaS offering grew by 57.8% in 2019 - with more than half of its $7.9 billion revenue coming from North America.
Alibaba Cloud – which is the dominant IaaS force in China – grew by 62.4% over the year, generating revenue of $4 billion. Fellow China-based Tencent also grew its IaaS offering by more than 100%, making it the second-biggest cloud services provider in China.
Google, which focuses on providing organisations with industry-specific solutions on robust computing infrastructure, also saw IaaS growth of 80.1%. The firm’s IaaS revenue expanded by $1.3 billion in 2018 to $2.4 billion in 2019, the research firm revealed.
Looking ahead, Gartner expects there to be a "continued push" of cloud spending as a direct result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
"When enterprises were compelled to move their applications to the public cloud as a result of the pandemic, they realised the true benefits of public cloud and it is unlikely that they will change course," Nag explained.
"In the recovery and rebound phase, CIOs are recognizing that they don’t need to bring workloads back on premises, which will further increase cloud spending and drive new applications around cloud-hosted collaboration that incorporate emerging technologies such as virtual reality and immersive video experiences.”
