Why do the three biggest cloud providers rule almost 75% of the market? There are thousands of cloud providers worldwide, so it’s odd that a handful dominate the sector. To understand why they’re powerhouses, you need to know what they offer and how they plan to adapt in 2024.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the biggest cloud providers. It consistently outperforms its competition year after year, maintaining its top position in the cloud services market:
AWS offers sought-after features like a content delivery network, cloud-hosted servers and database storage. It also embraces the adoption of artificial intelligence with AI search tools, edge device support and machine learning development services.
AWS is incredibly successful — it’s a larger profit driver than Amazon’s e-commerce service. Since it tailors itself to small businesses instead of being exclusive to large enterprises, it broadens its customer base and secures greater revenue.
Even though Microsoft Azure has a massive market share, it’s not even close to AWS:
Microsoft Azure is the second biggest global cloud provider because it provides convenient and practical enterprise tools. It also offers Microsoft Defender and intelligent security, which are useful for the 57% of cloud users who feel concerned about security.
While Google is leading in artificial intelligence, search engine and consumer electronics markets, it doesn’t perform as well as AWS or Microsoft Azure in the cloud computing space:
Google Cloud has underperformed in recent years — meaning it hasn’t met stakeholders’ expectations — but it has still slowly expanded its market share. Google is a household name, so its cloud adoption rates will undoubtedly increase over time, making it one to watch in 2024.
We’re done with the three biggest cloud providers, meaning market shares now shrink to less than 5% for all others:
Despite its relatively small market share, Alibaba Cloud still boasts an impressive lineup of services and tools. It offers a 24/7 security center, anti-DDoS and an end-to-end ML platform. These kinds of tools are in demand, so Alibaba may take over more of the market in 2024.
It’s also worth mentioning Alibaba is a big name in China. In 2022, it made up 36% of the market share for cloud infrastructure services. Considering it’s such a big name there, there’s a strong chance it could expand and become a strong competitor.
Huawei isn’t big in the United States, but it performs very well in China. That said, it doesn’t come out on top globally:
Huawei’s cloud service offers all the basics like backups, a content delivery network, ML model development and data visualization tools. Even though it isn’t one of the biggest cloud providers in the United States, it has a 19% market share in China — meaning it may overtake competitors like Alibaba in 2024.
The International Business Machines (IBM) corporation is a big name in many sectors, but it hasn’t caught up to its competitors in market share or revenue quite yet:
Some of IBM’s most sought-after cloud services include pre-configured security and compliance tools, analytics, edge application management, encryption and a content delivery network. It even leverages Watson — its natural language processing AI — to help its clients.
Salesforce’s cloud computing services are profitable. Even though it holds a small market share, it’s still one of the biggest cloud providers around:
Service Cloud is Salesforce’s top-performing service. It offers management dashboards, automation and analytics to improve client relationships and help its users streamline workflows. Although it doesn’t have a lead in the AI niche yet, that may change by 2025.
Oracle Cloud may technically have a low market share, but it still outperforms dozens of smaller competitors:
Oracle Cloud is one of the few cloud providers offering hybrid, public, dedicated and multi-cloud solutions. Since it’s also delved into AI analytics, tools and development services, it may soon overtake Salesforce and IBM in the cloud computing market.
Dell Technologies has made some big moves with its cloud services recently, making it stand out as a strong competitor in 2024:
The senior Vice President of Dell Technologies’ Central Eastern Europe, Middle East, Turkey, and Africa region — Mohammed Amin — has pointed to multi-cloud and generative AI as the company’s focus in 2024.
Apparently, Amin believes reconsidering cloud users’ preferences and modernizing the company’s approach will be crucial in 2024. Leaders like AWS and Microsoft Azure seem to have considered the same things, meaning it’s a solid business strategy.
Even though Tencent Cloud makes up the lowest market share before getting into 1% and below, it is still technically one of the biggest cloud providers globally:
Tencent is another one of the cloud providers that does relatively poorly globally but has a strong presence in China. While it may seem like an insignificant company, it stands to outperform Alibaba and Huawei in 2024 if it accelerates multi-cloud and AI tool development.
While it’s unlikely AWS and Microsoft Azure will go anywhere, Google, Alibaba, Tencent, Oracle and IBM might change rankings. The gap between them is small and their aspirations are large, so there’s a strong chance they’ll be in fierce competition with each other in 2024 and beyond.
