Revenues of the largest cloud providers due to coronavirus grow by 33%

Amazon, Microsoft and Google uncovered their revenues for the third quarter of 2020 – they amounted to almost $ 33 billion.The reason for this rapid growth is the coronavirus pandemic, which is forcing companies around the world to close offices and move work to the clouds.

Synergy Research chief analyst John Dinsdale notes that this came as a surprise: “While we expected continued growth in the market, the third quarter results were somewhat surprising. This is unusual for such a large market. Obviously, the coronavirus has given an additional impetus to the industry, which is already developing rapidly. “

First places

Market leader – predictably, Amazon, with $ 11.6 billion in third-quarter revenue, was $ 10.8 billion last year, a 29% increase over last year. Amazon continues to show slower growth in the cloud computing market, but it has a stable leadership in terms of market share (33%). The company’s revenues are nearly double that of its closest competitor, Microsoft.

Microsoft Azure has 18% of the market; revenues grew 48% per year. In the third quarter, the company received $ 700 million more than in the second.

Google announced 9% growth in cloud computing revenues, earning $ 2.98 billion in the third quarter and $ 2.7 billion in the second.

Alibaba and IBM tied for fourth place with 5% growth and about $ 1.65 billion in revenue.

At the same time, the cloud division of Alibaba plans this year for the first time to go “plus”. The company’s CEO, Daniel Zhang, said the public sector and financial services were the biggest contributors to the growth of the cloud division.

“We believe that cloud computing is the fundamental infrastructure of the digital era, but it is still in its early stages of growth. We intend to further increase our investment here, ”Zhang said.

Alibaba’s fiscal year began in April 2020 and ended on March 31, 2021.

Coronavirus as an engine of progress

Analytical agency Gartner from May to June 2020 held online survey of 256 board members of large companies in the US, Europe and Asia. They talked about how the pandemic affected the introduction of new technologies in companies. 67% of those surveyed said they had increased their IT budget. And 7 out of 10 board members accelerated the digitalization of companies with the onset of the pandemic.

Large companies had appropriate strategies before, but there was no need to invest large funds in them, and somewhere the organizational structure also resisted. But with the onset of the pandemic and the massive shift to teleworking, digitalization was needed to maintain and improve customer engagement, and thus reach revenue targets.

The pandemic has demonstrated the value of digitalization in areas where physical contact has become more difficult – for example, in trade. The rapid transformation of processes has become a matter of survival for companies in the new environment.

What’s next

Canalys analyst Blake Murray says there is room for further market growth. In the near future, hybrid clouds will be actively used in new technologies such as 5G. “All three providers are partnering with mobile operators and deploying their cloud stacks in the operators’ data centers. The goal of these actions is to capitalize on 5G services in the business customer market and transform the IT infrastructure of mobile operators, ”he says.

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