According to new research, it seems Microsoft and IBM are leading the way in growth in cloud infrastructure services.
An analysis done by Synergy Research Group shows Microsoft and IBM grew 164 percent and 86 percent, respectively, with Amazon Web Services growing 49 percent.
"It has become clear that AWS finally has some tough competition to face," said John Dinsdale, chief research director at Synergy. "Until this quarter, [AWS] could claim that it was bigger than its four nearest competitors, but now at least one jewel has fallen from its crown,"
While the research is interesting, it is important to note that Synergy defines cloud infrastructure revenue as including infrastructure-as-a-services (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and private and hybrid cloud services, making the comparison between companies a little hard to make because of the different branches of cloud infrastructure services.
AWS was previously considered the fastest-growing leader in cloud infrastructure, larger than its four competitors combined. This is no longer true.
Google, which is another rival in the area, grew less than any of the other companies at 47 percent.
Despite the changes in growth, according to Syngery, Amazon "remains in a league of its own," with revenue of more than $1 billion per quarter, almost all from IaaS. Cloud infrastructure services in general reached $3.7 billion in the second quarter.
Microsoft and IBM have also both claimed quarterly revenue of around $1 billion, For them, however, much of the revenue is tied to software-as-a-service, cloud-related hardware products, or other associated services.
The total market growth over the quarter is now more than 45 percent.
Microsoft is generally making most of its progress in IaaS and PaaS, while IBM is leading the way in the private and hybrid infrastructure segment.
"While it remains a formidable leader of the market, Microsoft is making some huge strides in IaaS and PaaS while IBM now has clear leadership in the private and hybrid infrastructure services segment," Synergy says.
IBM is also committing over $2 billion into expanding its SoftLayer data center, which is likely to aid growth in cloud services for the company.
Both Microsoft and IBM have gained considerable market share over the last four quarters while AWS and Google have remained where they are.
Another competitor in the segment is Salesforce.com, which generally focuses on PaaS, but actually gets most of ts revenue from software-as-a-service. While Salesforce grew less than its competitors, it still grew 38 percent.
In total, quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenue is at $3.7 billion, and according to Synergy, 12-month revenue is more than $13 billion.
