Cloud Services Still are "Winner Take All"

source: Canalys

New data from Synergy Research Group shows that hyperscale operators are aggressively growing their share of key cloud service markets, a finding that should not come as a surprise. As with many application and access markets, “winner take all” of the “rule of three” tend to operate, with the consequence that only a few will lead in terms of market share.

Synergy' says 24 “hyperscale” companies in 2016 those companies accounted for 68 percent of the cloud infrastructure services market (IaaS, PaaS, private hosted cloud services) and 59 percent of the SaaS market.

Even that obscures the concentrated nature of leadership. In early 2016, for example, Amazon Web Services alone had about 33 percent share, while AWS plus Microsoft held half the market share. Add Google and IBM and four firms held about 66 percent share.

In 2012 those hyperscale operators accounted for just 47 percent share of each of those markets, says Synergy.

source: Synergy Research

In aggregate those 24 hyperscale operators now have almost 320 large data centers in their networks. The companies with the broadest data center footprint are the leading cloud providers – Amazon, Microsoft and IBM.

Each has 45 or more data center locations with at least two in each of the four regions (North America, APAC, EMEA and Latin America).