Cloud computing, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence are widely used as the current mainstream new technologies. Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to ensure competitiveness and achieve sustainable growth in the face of uncertainty in the future, people from all walks of life have increased investment in new technologies to drive digital and intelligent transformation. As a result, many aspects such as production mode, operation mode, product service, etc. use new technologies to achieve innovation, so as to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and stimulate the vitality of enterprises.
As global intelligence is in full swing, enterprise IT architectures are gradually migrating to cloud architectures. A report from Synergy Research states: Cloud is increasingly dominating the IT landscape, benefiting companies across the cloud ecosystem. Global cloud ecosystem revenue grew 25% to $235 billion in the first half of 2021. The largest increase was in cloud infrastructure services, including IaaS, PaaS and managed private cloud services. Remember, companies like Amazon, Salesforce, and Google barely had a foot in enterprise IT a decade ago, but are now major forces in the market.
The report also states that the cloud-related market is growing at an annual rate of 15% to more than 40%. Annual spending on cloud services will double in four years. Among them, the top performers in the overall cloud ecosystem are Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, Dell, Google and IBM. Other major players include Cisco, Adobe, Oracle, VMware, SAP, HPE, Alibaba, Inspur, Huawei. Collectively, these companies account for more than half of all cloud-related revenue.
From the perspective of cloud infrastructure services, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are undoubtedly the three major global giants. According to data released earlier by Synergy Research, in the second quarter of 2021, enterprises spent on cloud infrastructure services (including IaaS, IaaS, PaaS and managed private cloud services) reached $42 billion, while Amazon, Microsoft, and Google captured more than 63% of the market. Plus, Microsoft and Google have been slowly catching up to Amazon over the past few quarters.
It is worth mentioning that in the past 15 years, whether it is new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, or underlying technologies such as serverless, Amazon Cloud Technology has been leading the development trend of global cloud computing, making it an important infrastructure for society. Occupy one-third of the global cloud service market share.
At present, Amazon Cloud provides more than 200 types of services for the digital transformation of enterprises, injecting innovation vitality into all walks of life, and driving the revenue of Amazon cloud services to maintain strong growth. In the second quarter of 2021, Amazon cloud technology revenue was $14.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 37%, and operating profit was $4.193 billion. In the past 12 months, Amazon cloud technology global revenue has reached 52.7 billion US dollars.
“As more and more companies accelerate the pace of cloud-based reinvention and cloud-based innovation, we are also seeing accelerated growth in Amazon’s cloud technology,” said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Today, information technology is developing at an alarming rate. Through cloud computing technology, Amazon Cloud Technology provides many solid tools for digital transformation of enterprises in data analysis, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, information security and other aspects. Inject innovation vitality, accelerate industrial upgrading and development, promote the digital transformation of the industry, and benefit the whole society.
For Microsoft, the active transformation since Nadella took the helm has now transformed into a leading cloud computing company, and has allowed Microsoft to stand on top of the world again. As of now, Microsoft’s market value is 2.21 trillion US dollars, making it the second company in the world with a market value exceeding 2 trillion US dollars. This is mainly due to the growing cloud service market. As the world’s second largest cloud service provider, Microsoft is the strongest competitor on the Amazon cloud service track.
It is understood that more than 95% of the Fortune 500 companies in the world have adopted Microsoft intelligent cloud services for digital innovation, from Bridgestone, to UnitedHealth Group, to Ernst & Young, GE, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc., all relying on Microsoft Intelligent Cloud for innovation. More and more enterprises use Microsoft Intelligent Cloud to innovate, making Intelligent Cloud the largest business segment of Microsoft.
As of June 30, the fourth fiscal quarter of fiscal 2021 reported revenue of $17.4 billion in the intelligent cloud division, a year-on-year increase of 30%. Among them, server products and cloud services revenue increased by 34%, driven by Azure revenue. And it has brought strong growth in Microsoft’s overall revenue. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, Microsoft’s total revenue was $46.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 21%; the full-year revenue of fiscal 2021 increased by 18% year-on-year to $168.1 billion, and net profit was $61.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 38%.
Google has been increasing cloud computing in recent years, and its competitiveness cannot be underestimated. Although Google’s cloud service market share is relatively low compared to Amazon and Microsoft, as one of the world’s three largest cloud giants, its cloud service sector continues to hit new highs, showing a pattern of rapid growth. In fiscal 2020, Google Cloud’s revenue reached $13 billion, and in the first half of 2021, revenue exceeded $8.6 billion. Judging from this revenue scale, it shows Google’s strong competitiveness in the cloud service market.
Finally, the speed of intelligence and digitization centered on the cloud is accelerating, driving cloud services to become more and more mainstream in the future, as infrastructure is ubiquitous. Cloud service providers are the force behind global intelligence, helping enterprises to carry out digital transformation and innovation faster, while their cloud service sector will further grow, and the revenue scale is expected to continue to expand.
Yang Jianyong, Forbes columnist and winner of NetEase’s 2020 Most Influential Award, is committed to in-depth interpretation of cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud services and artificial intelligence. His views and research strategies have been cited by many authoritative media and well-known companies.
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