Global cloud growth is slowing at last

Despite earlier figures that suggested spending on cloud computing was continuing to grow as businesses were optimizing rather than cutting, but new figures from Synergy Research Group suggest that simply isn’t the case.

While companies continue to plough huge amounts of money into their cloud services, the rate at which the growth has been increasing showed significant signs of suffering over the last year.

Despite a smaller year-on-year growth in the first quarter of 2023 compared with the year prior – at 20% – some positives can be drawn such as the total figure which stood at $63 billion worldwide – up more than $10 billion compared with Q1 2022.

Cloud continues to grow, but more slowly

Continuing to occupy around one-third of the market is Amazon, with Microsoft trailing not oo far behind in second place accounting for 23% of the market, up from the year before. Google, also taking up a slightly larger section of the cloud market, accounted for just 10% in Q1 2023.

With growing spend, opportunities continue to present themselves to smaller companies who want a slice of the cake, but the Big Three’s dominance shows no sign of slowing as they account for almost two-thirds of the market collectively. In terms of private cloud alone, the effects are felt more harshly as they serve almost three-quarters (72%) of all customers.

All three have been subject to scrutiny in recent months by EU regulators in relation to their anticompetitive business practices that make it difficult, and often costly, to change providers.

Most notable in terms of growth beyond the Big Three were Oracle, Snowflake, MongoDB, Huawei, and a number of Chinese telcos.

The ongoing antitrust case shows no immediate sign of resolution, but with the market continuing to grow despite a tightening economy, ahead lies some potential, at least, for smaller companies to get a larger piece of the pie.

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