Microsoft, Google make strong surge in the cloud while IBM holds steady Credit: Thinkstock Despite Microsoft’s strong growth in the cloud market, Amazon reached a five-year high in its share of the cloud infrastructure service market. Amazon Web Services (AWS) had 25% revenue growth from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, giving it a 30% global market share in the last quarter of 2014, according to a report from Synergy Research Group. AWS’s year-over-year revenue growth was 51%. Amazon was able to grab that marketshare despite a strong third-quarter push from cloud rival Microsoft , which showed the highest year-over-year revenue growth – 96% — last quarter. Microsoft is in second place in the market with about 11% share. With strong 81% year-over-year revenue growth, Google advanced but was unable to grab the third-place spot from IBM which has about 7% of the market, compared to Google’s 5%, noted Synergy Research. “Many actual or perceived barriers to cloud adoption have now been removed and the worldwide market is on a strong growth trajectory,” said John Dinsdale, Synergy’s chief analyst and research director, in a statement. “The momentum that has been built up at AWS and Microsoft is particularly impressive. They have an ever-broadening portfolio of services and they are also benefitting from a slowdown in the super-aggressive price competition that was a feature of the first half of 2014.” Synergy estimates that overall quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues are nearing the $5 billion mark. Worldwide revenue for all of 2014, which grew 48% year over year, exceeded $16 billion. Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, said AWS simply had a head start in the cloud market, putting it in a strong position against competitors newer to the cloud. “AWS had a five-year head start so this doesn’t surprise me at all,” he said. “They have the broadest offering of anyone. Companies like Netflix and Instagram have used or are using AWS. If you are building infrastructure from scratch and aren’t worried about getting locked into Amazon’s API, you must look at them as a possibility.” While Google is doing well in the market, the company doesn’t have the enterprise background that Microsoft does, which gives the Redmond, Wash.-based company an edge. “Microsoft’s play is to take their market-leading software and make that scalable for their Azure cloud,” Moorhead said. “Microsoft has a lot of legacy companies, not startups, going to the cloud… Google has had a hard time translating their offering for business use. They don’t have the installed base Microsoft has, nor were they first in creating cloud services for businesses like AWS.” Related content news analysis Apple earnings: About that iPhone 'slump' in China Based on information from Thursday's earnings report, it seems that data pointing to an iPhone slump in China were over-baked. By Jonny Evans May 03, 2024 9 mins iMac iPhone Apple news Microsoft begins to phase out ‘classic’ Teams Microsoft is encouraging Teams customers to move to the new, faster version of the collaboration app; the older version will be switched off next year. By Matthew Finnegan May 03, 2024 3 mins Microsoft Teams Collaboration Software Productivity Software news analysis Apple confirms it will open up the iPad in Europe this fall The latest efforts to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act mean developers can offer to side load apps to both iPhones and iPads in the EU. Apple has also taken steps to improve what it offers to smaller and non-commercial developers in the By Jonny Evans May 02, 2024 6 mins iPad Apple Mobile Apps news Udacity offers laid-off US workers free access to its courses for 30 days Sign-ups will be available over the next 30 days By Lucas Mearian May 02, 2024 4 mins Technology Industry IT Jobs IT Skills Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe