Microsoft Bests Amazon as Top Public Cloud, IDC Reports

Microsoft rode its software-as-a-service (SaaS) strength to beat out cloud rival Amazon Web Services (AWS) in capturing the largest share of global public cloud services revenue last year, according to IDC. Microsoft rode its software-as-a-service (SaaS) strength to beat out cloud rival Amazon Web Services (AWS) in capturing the largest share of global public cloud services revenue last year, according to IDC. The research firm reported that Microsoft accumulated 14.4% of the market’s $408.6 billion in revenues last year, just a whisker ahead of the 13.7% that AWS snared. Microsoft has offerings in all four sections of the public cloud services market lumped by IDC into its report, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), system infrastructure SaaS, and application SaaS. Salesforce, Google, and SAP rounded out the top five in IDC’s ranking, with those vendors capturing 40% of the total market. Overall market revenues increased 29% compared to the previous year. SaaS applications brought in the most cloud services revenue with $177.8 billion, representing 23.5% growth from the year prior. IaaS accounted for $91.3 billion of revenue, followed by system infrastructure SaaS and PaaS. Of the categories comprising IDC’s public cloud foundational services, PaaS saw the highest year-over-year growth at 39.1%, though it brought in the least 2021 revenue at $68.2 billion. “Organizations continued their strong adoption of shared public cloud services in 2021 to align IT investments more closely with business outcomes and ensure rapid access to the innovations required to be a digital-first business,” IDC VP Rick Villars said in a statement. In an increasingly digital world, enterprises that are truly thinking ahead use a business outcomes lens to make strategic decisions, and this is what fuels public cloud ecosystem growth, IDC PaaS Research Director Lara Greden explained. Cloud service providers played their part in that growth this year with a “relentless drive” to improve developer productivity and speed of application delivery, “including emphasis on containers-first and serverless-first approaches,” she added. Villars expects these cloud giants will continue to have a crucial role in helping enterprises solve persistent market challenges like supply chain disruption, inflation, and geopolitical tension. “IT teams will also focus more on bringing greater financial accountability to the variable spend models of public cloud services,” Villars added.