Amazon and Microsoft are proving to be a different class in the cloud game

Amazon and Microsoft have unveiled bumper financial results and now it is over to Google to prove it can keep pace with the two clear leaders in the cloud segment.

For years, it was Amazon’s cloud business unit, AWS, which was incomparable to the rest of the cloud segment. No-one could get anywhere near this trailblazer, though Microsoft has closed that gap recently. The question is whether anyone else has? The likes of Google, IBM and Oracle claim to be in the same league, but there is little evidence to support this, but Google has a chance to set the record straight next week.

Amazon and Microsoft have now revealed their numbers for the final three-month period of 2019. The story is not quite complete without Google’s numbers, realistically the only competitor who has a credible claim to be in the same league, but the numbers are eye-watering.

At group level, Amazon increased revenues by 21% during the last quarter, with the cloud business bringing in $9.9 billion, an increase of 23% year-on-year. While net income only increased 19% to $2.6 billion, this was actually 79% of the total net income across the group. The cloud business unit at AWS is a profit machine.

Over at Microsoft, group revenues increased by 14% to $36.9 billion, while net income was up 38% to $11.6 billion. Revenue in the ‘Intelligent Cloud’ unit increased 27% to $11.9 billion with Azure’s revenue up 62% for the quarter. Cloud products and services of course factor into the other Microsoft business units, but the ‘Intelligent Cloud’ group is showing the most aggressive growth.

Although revenues are only one part of the picture, market share estimates also tell another story.

Looking at the most recent estimates from Synergy Research Group, Amazon is leading the cloud segment with 39%, Microsoft sits in second with 19%, Google is on 9% and 5% for Alibaba. Salesforce now has 4% and IBM is on 3%, while no-one else has more than a 2% share. These figures are for the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) segments.

As mentioned before, the landscape is not complete until Google releases its numbers next week, though IBM and Salesforce have released theirs. At IBM, total cloud revenues stood at $6.8 billion, up 21% year-on-year, while Salesforce reported group revenues of $4.5 billion for the last quarter, an increase of 33%. These numbers are attractive, investors might well be pleased, but Microsoft and Amazon look like they are sitting alone in the top tier of the cloud industry.

Another factor to consider are the deal wins.

While Amazon has been hoovering up deals with SMEs and the emerging digital businesses, Microsoft has extensive existing relationships with almost every major corporation in the Western world. The firm claims to currently be working with 95 of the Fortune 100 companies on cloud infrastructure. These companies like the look of Microsoft, thanks to a stronger focus on hybrid-cloud, whereas Amazon has a better reputation for the speed and scale of cloud-only strategies.

During the last period, Microsoft secured the US Department of Defense $10 billion JEDI cloud contract, which will cover 1,700 data centres and the transition of millions of devices from on-premise servers to the cloud. AWS lost out on this deal, but it has got plenty of significant customer wins to boast of; Western Union, media firm Fox, the NFL, pharmaceutical giant Novartis and Best Western Hotels & Resorts.

Interestingly enough, the rapid expansion of these internet giants might well start to encroach potential revenues which have been earmarked for the telcos.

The last few months have not only seen CAPEX investment from the likes of AWS and Microsoft, but also picking up industry executives. An excellent example of this is Alex Clauberg, a former Deutsche Telekom executive.

As the connected world starts to spread to more corners of society and the ‘edge’ develops, there are plenty of opportunities for telcos to make more money from what is quickly becoming a commoditised service. However, there is no guarantee the newly created ‘service’ revenues will be reserved for the telcos themselves. Clauberg’s move is evidence the internet players are attempting to muscle in on telco revenues.

Clauberg is a well-known name in the SDN and NFV sector and is the current Chairman of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP). He was previously VP and CTO at T-Systems International, the global services and consulting arm of DT, but now works as Solutions Architects Leader, at AWS. There is not a huge amount of information as to what this new job actually is, but it is demonstrative of the ambitions of the likes of AWS in the telco world.

These are companies which are growing rapidly in their traditional playing grounds and pushing aggressively to steal profits in places they should be considered secondary. Google still has an opportunity to place itself at the top table of the profitable cloud segment, but it does look like AWS and Microsoft are in a league of their own.