Infrastructure as a Service IaaS (global market) Infrastructure-as-service

Market definition from Gartner's perspective

Cloudy service IaaS (infrastructure-as-service) represents the largest segment of the cloud service market. In this magic quadrant, only IaaS public cloud computing is evaluated. This does not include: IaaS private cloud services (whether in or out of the enterprise), cloud providers, storage systems providers, PaaS providers, SaaS cloud service brokers, or other types of service providers of this type.

IaaS public cloud computing, in the context of this study, is defined as standardized, highly automated multiple lease offers, where computing resources, complemented by network capabilities and storage functions, are owned and organized by a service provider and offered to the client on demand. The client has the ability to independently manage this infrastructure using a graphical web user interface that serves as a console for managing IT operations in a specific environment. Optionally, Application Programming Interface (API) client access to the infrastructure may be offered.

2024: IaaS is the growth driver for the global IT services market in the next 5 years

During 2023-2028, IaaS platforms (infrastructure as a service) will be the driver of the global IT services market as a whole. The pace of development of the IaaS segment is expected to be 3.5 times higher than in the industry. This is stated in a study by Forrester, the results of which were released on May 1, 2024.

The report notes that the IT services industry is often overlooked, although it accounts for more than a third of the world's annual technology spending - about four times the cost of computer hardware. Forrester predicts that the IT services market will reach $2 trillion by 2028. However, despite the expected positive dynamics, companies providing IT services will face a number of problems. Among them are the need to retain qualified specialists, maintain a balance between the number of personnel and growing competition from software development and engineering companies, as well as the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GENI).

IaaS platforms will be the driver of the global IT services market

According to Forrester analysts, in the period from 2023 to 2028, the IT services industry will demonstrate a CAGR (CAGR in complex percentages) at 4.6%. And in the IaaS segment, this value will be about 16%. Moreover, the development of the market will be the fastest in the Asia-Pacific region. Among the key growth factors, the study authors name:

Financial services and manufacturing. The top ten IT service companies are estimated to receive 44% of their revenue from financial services, manufacturing and power. At the same time, significant growth opportunities remain: according to Accenture, only 5% of companies providing production and engineering services scale mature digital technologies to all their enterprises.

Managed services. The IaaS segment is expected to almost double its share in the IT services market - from 8% in 2022 to 15% in 2028. At the same time, the greatest dynamics will be observed in leading hyperscalers. Growth in Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2023 was 26% and 13%, respectively, while Azure and other Microsoft cloud services showed an increase of 17%.

Information security. Canalys estimates that approximately two-thirds of the $224 billion dedicated to cybersecurity in 2024 will come from IT services in consulting, outsourcing, managed services, solution deployment and integration, service and support.

Despite the forecast strong growth of the market, its participants will face a number of difficulties. IT services companies have increased their headcount during the COVID-19 pandemic, but in the current macroeconomic environment, many of them are forced to cut jobs. For the sake of improving profit indicators, industry participants are considering the possibility of introducing automation tools. At the same time, competition from software development and engineering companies is intensifying, especially in the areas of consulting, security, maintenance, digital technologies and networks. Analysts also talk about the increasing influence of Genia. It is estimated that 57% of jobs lost to automation in professional services in the United States will be associated precisely with the introduction of Genia. If such systems are able to improve the efficiency of IT services and reduce project costs, companies will have additional resources to do business.^[1]

2023: 16.2% market growth to $140 billion Leaders

In 2023, the global IaaS (infrastructure as a service) market reached $140 billion. This is approximately 16.2% more than in the previous year, when costs were estimated at $120.5 billion. One of the industry's drivers is artificial intelligence, according to a study by Gartner, the results of which were released on July 22, 2024.

The largest player in the global IaaS industry is: in Amazon 2023, this company received $54.65 billion in revenue, which corresponds to a share of 39%. For comparison, a year earlier, these indicators were $48.12 billion and 39.9%, respectively. Thus, on an annualized basis, Amazon increased revenue from the provision of IaaS services by 13.6%. In second place in the ranking is Microsoft with $32.2 billion and 23% against $25.89 billion and 21.5% in 2022. The Redmond corporation's turnover rose by 24.4%. Closes the top three, Google which in 2023 received $11.45 billion in revenue: this is 26.3% more compared to the result for the previous year, which amounted to $9.07 billion. The company's share rose from 7.5% to 8.2% year-on-year.

Alibaba Group is on the fourth line in the ranking with revenue of $11.12 billion and a share of 7.9% at the end of 2023. A year earlier, the company received $9.22 billion, showing a share of 7.7%. Year-on-year revenue growth was recorded at 20.6%. Huawei is in fifth place with revenue of about $5.98 billion and 4.3% of the market. A year earlier, the figures were $5.25 billion and 4.4%. Year-on-year growth was approximately 13.9%.

Thus, in 2023, all leading IaaS providers showed positive dynamics. At the same time, the five largest companies together occupy 82.4% of the global IaaS market. A year earlier, the value was lower - about 81%. All other industry participants combined reduced their presence from 19% in 2022 to 17.6% at the end of 2023.

As leading hyperscalers continue to expand their IaaS offerings amid the rapid development of generative AI, we will see the growth of other cloud segments such as SaaS ("software as a service") and PaaS "platform as a service"). IaaS is a wave that lifts all boats, "says Sid NAG, vice president of analytics at Gartner.

According to him, the cloud is a fundamental and scalable foundation necessary for the development of Genia services and applications. In particular, training artificial intelligence models requires significant IaaS resources. In this regard, the demand for capacity in the public cloud market has increased sharply and is expected to continue to increase at least until 2028.

IaaS continues to grow steadily, reflecting the observed revolution in Genia. The need for infrastructure to train artificial intelligence models, inference formation and optimization is increasing and will grow exponentially, having a direct impact on the consumption of IaaS services, Nag emphasizes.

In general, the IaaS model provides four main advantages that allow companies to grow faster and achieve their goals. In particular, organizations are able to reduce the time and cost of preparing and scaling the environments needed to develop, test, and use off-the-shelf systems. IaaS allows companies to scale their infrastructure as needed, paying for only the resources used. With IaaS, enterprises can use new, improved equipment and various services. The IaaS model is available in most regions of the world, and service provider data centers themselves are located in densely populated areas, enabling companies to expand their network presence faster.^[2]

2022: The global IaaS market grew 29.7% over the year. Leaders

The volume of the global market for public cloud services IaaS ("infrastructure as a service") in 2022 reached $120.3 billion. This is 29.7% more compared to 2021, when the costs in the corresponding segment amounted to $92.8 billion. Such data are provided in a study by Gartner, the results of which were released on July 18, 2023.

IaaS growth in 2022 was higher than expected, despite a slight slowdown in the fourth quarter of the year under review, when customers focused on maximizing the use of their previously allocated capacity. This situation is a natural consequence of market maturity, "said Sid Nag, vice president of analytics at Gartner.

Amazon became the leader in the global IaaS industry in 2022 with revenue of $48.13 billion and a share of 40%. For comparison: a year earlier, this company received $35.38 billion, taking 38.1% of the market. Thus, on an annualized basis, growth was demonstrated at 36%.

In second place in the ranking of leading players is Microsoft, which received $25.86 billion, which corresponds to 21.5% of the industry. In 2021, IaaS services brought the Redmond corporation $19.15 billion, and the share was 20.6%. Year-on-year growth is 35%. It is noted that Microsoft's software-focused strategy continues to stimulate the development of the IaaS sector, as customers need more cloud resources to support automation, advanced analytics and digital workplace organization.

Closes the top three largest providers of IaaS services Alibaba Group, whose revenue in 2022 reached $9.28 billion - 7.7% of the industry. For comparison: in 2021, these values ​ ​ were $9.06 billion and 9.8%. The increase in sales on an annualized basis was recorded at 2.4%. While Alibaba continues to lead the IaaS market in China, its limited potential to expand globally has slowed growth. Against this background, Alibaba decided to spin off its cloud business into a separate company.

The fourth place in the ranking went: Google$9.07 billion and 7.5%. In 2021, the company received revenue in the IaaS segment in the amount of $6.43 billion with a share of 6.9%. Growth in annual terms is 41%. Increased investment Google in independent cloud and expanded sales and marketing partnerships have helped build customer base. As a result, Google showed the fastest growth rate in the IaaS sector among the top five companies.

In the fifth position of the rating is, Huawei which in 2022 received $5.25 billion, taking 4.4% of the market. A year earlier, the company raised $4.19 billion - this corresponds to a share of 4.5%. Year-on-year growth was 25.3%. It is noted that Huawei is steadily increasing its revenues from IaaS services in China and emerging markets.

All other participants in the IaaS industry combined in 2022 received $22.75 billion in revenue, taking 18.9%. In 2021, the values ​ ​ were $18.57 billion and 20%. Year-on-year growth was at 22.5%. Thus, the top five companies account for approximately 80% of the global IaaS market.

The cloud has gone from a revolutionary technology to a business revolution. Generative artificial intelligence will continue to drive the cloud computing market - especially as hyperscalers seek to support offerings beyond existing solutions. As businesses integrate generative AI into their spectrum of technologies, there are new opportunities for cloud providers related to sovereignty, ethics, privacy and sustainability, Nag noted.[3]

2021: The global IaaS market has soared 41.4%. Leaders

The volume of the global market for IaaS solutions (infrastructure as a service) at the end of 2021 amounted to $90.89 billion, which is 41.4% more than a year earlier, when the cost of such developments was measured at $64.3 billion. Such data in the analytical company Gartner was released in early June 2022.

The IaaS market continues to grow steadily as cloud architecture becomes the main one for modern workflows, says Sid Nag, vice president of research at Gartner. - Clouds have the scalability and composibility that advanced technologies and applications need, and enable companies to meet growing needs such as independence, data integration, and customer experience.

According to the study, in 2021, the five largest suppliers Amazon Microsoft(,,,,) Alibaba Google Huawei accounted for more than 80% of the market. Amazon remained in first place with sales of IaaS solutions at $35.4 billion and a market share of 38.9%.

In second place in the list of the largest IaaS vendors in 2021 is Microsoft, which accounted for more than a fifth of the revenue in the market. Given that many organizations already rely widely on Microsoft's enterprise software and services , the Azure platform can use these capabilities in almost all industries, analysts say.

Alibaba remained in the top 3 manufacturers of infrastructure-as-a-service solutions in 2021. According to Gartner, the Chinese company continues to lead the home cloud services market. It is also close to becoming a leading player in Indonesia, Malaysia and other emerging cloud computing markets, since Alibaba understands their specifics and can become a kind of bridge to e-commerce in these regions.

Regional cloud ecosystems are becoming increasingly important in the face of growing geopolitical fragmentation and new regulatory and legal requirements, providing opportunities for vendors with strong positions in their regions, Nag said.

Google Cloud showed the highest growth rate among the five leading IaaS suppliers: in 2021, the company's revenue in the market rose by 63.7% and reached $6.4 billion. This rise, the researchers say, was driven by the steadily increasing adoption of traditional enterprise applications, as well as Google's innovations in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and Kubernetes containers. In addition, an extensive partner ecosystem contributes to the development of Google's business and attracting new customers, experts say.

Even though Huawei's growth in the IaaS market slowed in 2021 after two years of growth of more than 200%, the company still remains in the top five. The Chinese company has invested heavily in its IaaS ecosystem over the past two years, and thanks to an updated open source hardware and software strategy, and with the support of partners, Huawei has been able to provide highly empowered products for universities, developers and startups.

The next stage of IaaS market growth will be associated with customer experience, digital results and the virtual world, says Sig Nag. - New technologies that can help companies bring technologies like metaverse, chatbots and digital twins closer to customers will require a hyper-scalable infrastructure to meet growing demands for computing power and storage systems.[4]

Notes

2020: Global IaaS market growth by 40.7%, to $64.3 billion

The volume of the global market for IaaS solutions at the end of 2020 reached $64.3 billion, an increase of 40.7% compared to 2019. Such data at the end of June 2021 were published in the analytical company Gartner.

Hyperscale infrastructure providers continue to build distributed cloud and edge solutions that move public cloud capabilities to private and on-premises environments, meeting company needs for data sovereignty, workflow portability, and minimum network latency requirements, comments Gartner Vice President of Research Sid Nag. - This fact, combined with the fact that most organizations relied on public clouds during the [COVID-19 coronavirus] pandemic, contributed to the twofold growth of the digital market in 2020.

The period when CIOs invested in IaaS and PaaS separately is behind us, the expert said. The main opportunities for cloud providers now relate to edge computing, 5G networks and artificial intelligence, as Chief information officer seek to invest in technologies that meet their complex and new workflows, he added.

According to Gartner's calculations, in 2020, the top five IaaS providers accounted for 80% of the market, and almost 90% of such service providers showed growth.

Amazon retained its dominant position in the global IaaS market with revenue of $26.2 billion in 2020 and a 41% stake. Revenue growth of the American company by 28.7% was below market rates, while the dynamics primarily reflect the fact that Amazon customers are increasingly using the company's products.

The second place among the largest suppliers of IaaS solutions at the end of 2020 was left to Microsoft, whose revenue in the market reached $12.7 billion, and growth rates - 60%. Experts attributed a significant increase in the corporation's revenue to the crisis in the global healthcare system and a large-scale transition to a remote and hybrid work format, as a result of which the demand for Microsoft Azure services for transferring important processes to the cloud increased from existing customers. Active cloud migration was carried out by representatives of the medical sector (for example, to launch chat bots with artificial intelligence), the production industry (for the implementation of digital twins) and retail (for e-commerce).

The top 3 in the rating closed, Alibaba whose main IaaS business falls on. In China 2020, the company's revenue in the market under consideration exceeded $6 billion, compared to 2019, it increased by 52.8%. In 2020, Alibaba showed the highest growth in infrastructure sales as a service in the educational segment (+ 105%) thanks to the sale of a collaboration platform, DingTalk which was in demand against the background of the trend towards remote work and training.

Huawei's revenue from IaaS solutions grew by more than 200% for the second year in a row, which allowed the Chinese company to enter the top five vendors for the first time in 2020 with an income of $2.9 billion. Huawei has earned more than 90% of this amount in China, a region where the cloud market is growing rapidly.

After 2019, Huawei abruptly abandoned the sale of equipment and invested heavily in its cloud business, which is starting to bring results, said Sid Nag.

Google's revenue from sales of IaaS services in 2020 increased by 66% compared to 2019 and amounted to almost $4 billion. The growth was driven by customers in areas such as retail, government and healthcare, who focused on developing and implementing cloud-based applications within hybrid and multi-cloud models.^[1]

2019

Gartner: Global IaaS market up 37.3%

The volume of the global IaaS solutions market in 2019 increased by 37.3% compared to 2018 and amounted to $44.5 billion. Such data are provided by the analytical company Gartner.

In future research, experts intend to combine PaaS and IaaS services into one cloud platform and infrastructure services (CIPS) market. Global spending on such decisions in 2019 reached $63.4 billion against $44.6 billion a year earlier. Thus, this market showed 42.3 percent growth.

The leaders in sales revenue from CIPS are named companies, and Amazon Microsoft. Alibaba The fourth place was shared by the companies and, Tencent Oracle which recorded 2.8% of the market under consideration in monetary terms.

Among the "pure" IaaS providers, there is still no equal to Amazon, which accounted for 45% of the market at the end of 2019. The company increased revenue by 29% and continued to expand its cloud business outside of IaaS, the report said.

The second position in terms of the sale of IaaS services is still Microsoft, which accounted for about 18% of the market at the end of 2019. The company earned about $8 billion on such products, more than half of which are in North America. Microsoft in 2019 was able to increase IaaS revenue by 57.8% thanks to the offer of Azure services together with other products of the company, the researchers explain.

Alibaba closed the top three global market for infrastructure-as-a-service solutions in 2019 largely thanks to the Chinese market, which the company unconditionally dominates. Alibaba Cloud's annual revenue jumped 62.4% to more than $4 billion. The company has continued to expand its cloud infrastructure business and is committed to offering smart cloud solutions to help customers with digital transformation, the study said.

Google, which in 2019 ranked fourth in the ranking of IaaS suppliers, increased revenues in this market by 80.1%. According to analysts, the cloud division of the American corporation is focused on the supply of specialized industry solutions that provide a reliable computing architecture. North America accounts for about half of Google's revenue from sales of IaaS solutions.

Experts also noted the rapid growth of Tencent, the second largest Chinese cloud service provider. Companies from the Middle Kingdom, primarily Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei, are showing a strong rise, taking shares from leading vendors in the developed cloud market. Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei have seized the Chinese market, which has a high degree of regulation, as a result of which it is very difficult for foreign players, including American ones, to gain a foothold in the Celestial Empire. The only option for penetration into the Chinese market for foreign vendors is cooperation with local companies.

The study notes that the world's five largest IaaS service providers occupied about 80% of this market, versus 77% a year earlier. Three-quarters of all companies offering IaaS solutions showed growth in 2019.

Cloud helps grow the digital business that remains the focus of Chief information officers, "says Gartner Vice President of Research Sid Nag. - It allows you to use technologies such as peripheral computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and 5G networks. Each of the listed technologies requires a scalable, elastic and high-performance infrastructure platform such as the IaaS public cloud, so the market is growing rapidly.

According to Naga, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic spurred demand for cloud technologies, since under these conditions companies were forced to transfer their processes to the public cloud. Business has realized the advantage of such technologies and is now unlikely to turn off this course, the expert continues.

During the recovery of the economic and business environment, Chief information officer realize that they do not need to return local processes, and this further increases cloud computing costs and promotes new cloud collaboration technologies such as virtual reality and immersive video, Sid Nag added.

In 2019, analysts recorded a significant increase in competition in the IaaS market, which led to greater specialization within cloud providers. Some of them, for example, have become more focused on small and medium-sized businesses. Other players have become more involved with big business.

It is reported that fewer customers are interested in classic IaaS. The demand for managed services is growing - configuration, monitoring, cloud administration up to the application software level, deployment of container management environments, the use of application protection tools and other software solutions in SaaS format with IaaS.

Cloud services have definitely shaken up the industry, "says Sid Neg. - We don't know a single vendor or service provider whose business model and revenue growth today would not depend on the increasing use of enterprise cloud computing strategies.

According to Gartner surveys, more than a third of organizations see cloud spending as one of the top three market investment priorities.^[2]

Gartner: Consolidation awaits IaaS market

At the end of July 2019, Gartner published a study of the IaaS market ("Market Share Analysis: IaaS and IUS, Worldwide, 2018"), which states that it continues to grow rapidly, but this is practically not reflected in Amazon - the company still retains a dominant position. In general, the market volume compared to 2017 increased by 31.3%, the total revenue of suppliers reached $32.4 billion. The share of the five main players - Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google and Alibaba - continues to grow, reaching 77%, while in 2017 it did not exceed 73%.

According to Gartner, two scenarios are possible in the market: the absorption of some players by others or the departure of some of them. "The US market is consolidated, but there are several lagging players who are unlikely to succeed specifically in the IaaS segment. The peculiarity of public clouds, and to an even greater extent this applies to IaaS, is the constant influx of investment, without which the provider loses its competitiveness. IaaS mainly relies on a huge number of data centers, and in order to develop them, you need to draw funds from other sources, for example, from related businesses. "

The European market is arranged differently. "There are second-tier players in Europe - they continue to do business and do so successfully. The question is different, how long can they withstand market pressure. Perhaps the root of consolidation will germinate from there. Take the GDPR, which regulates data protection within the European Union. Data protection, storage, and privacy initiatives require significant capital investment, and it is not yet clear if local cloud players will find the funds. There are many mid-tier players in Europe, such as OVH in France, as well as many small players who hosted and provided colocation services, but then decided to enter the IaaS segment. I think it will be very difficult for them to keep up with the speed of this market, "said[3] expert[4].

As for possible changes in the composition of the current five largest IaaS suppliers, according to the expert, "Amazon's market share will soon decline. However, this has already happened. At the end of 2018, its share grew by only 26.8%, while the shares of its competitors grew significantly faster: Microsoft grew by 61% over the same period of time, Alibaba - by 93%, Google - by 60%. Obviously, they catch up very quickly. Slowing growth and shrinking Amazon's market share is not a bad thing. If one of the vendors receives three or four times more profit than the nearest competitor, a drop in his market share as the market itself matures is inevitable. "

Given that the IaaS market has reached maturity, this complicates the entry of new players into it. "Entering the market has become challenging. The reason is the capital cost of creating cloud data centers. These are really huge funds that will have to be spent to create regional offices in different countries. In order not to lose parity in the future, add to this investment in research and development, and this is not all expenses. Plus, large-scale thinking skills are needed, the expert explained. - If a new competitor does not want to invest to achieve a scale like Amazon and its closest competitors, entering the market will be practically impossible. Thus, scale, investment and skills must be combined. You need to understand that hiring people with the right set of skills to create cloud offers is fraught with difficulties. Containers, microservices, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data specialists are highly paid workers, and they are in great demand. There are other kinds of obstacles. "

2018: Gartner: Market growth 31.3% to $32.4 billion

In 2018, the world market for IaaS solutions reached $32.4 billion, an increase of 31.3% compared to 2017. This is evidenced by Gartner data released on July 29, 2019.

The top five (Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and IBM) accounted for about 77% of revenue from the sale of IaaS services against 73% a year earlier. In 2019, consolidation in the market continued due to the rapid growth rates of leading suppliers: from 2017 to 2018, their revenues rose by 39%, while their competitors showed much more modest dynamics (+ 11%).

Consolidation will remain as organizations and developers look for standardized widely supported platforms to develop and host cloud applications, said Sid Nag, vice president of research at Gartner.

According to him, the dominance of leaders and the weakening positions of small and niche players indicate the importance of scaling up business in the field of public clouds IaaS.

The success and growth of the market share await those providers who allocate money for capital expenditures for the construction of data centers, which are required by different regions, the expert said.

Leadership is maintained by Amazon, which accounted for nearly half of the revenue in the market in question in 2018. IaaS revenues of the American Internet giant jumped by almost 27% due to the development of new markets through the provision of new services, as well as acquisitions that contribute to the rise of the main cloud business.

Alibaba Cloud showed the highest growth rate (+ 92.6%) in 2018 due to the rapid growth of business in China and large investments in research and development of its products, especially in comparison with manufacturers of hyperconverged solutions.

Alibaba Cloud has created an ecosystem of managed service providers (MSPs) and independent software providers (ISVs), Gartner's research says. Alibaba has the financial resources to maintain this trend and invest in global expansion, analysts say.^[5]

In 2018, only six vendors entered the "magic quadrant" of Gartner in the IaaS segment (see illustration below), which is eight companies less than a year earlier. Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink), Fujitsu, Interoute, Joyent, RackSpace, NTT Communications, Skytap, Virtustream are excluded from the rating. The reduction reflects market consolidation and increased customer expectations, which Gartner reflected in the stricter criteria for inclusion in the "magic quadrant."

In 2018, when choosing strategic IaaS providers, Gartner customers pay attention to the globality of the service:

• IaaS should be available as a separate service, without the need to buy additional services.
• The provider should be among the top global IaaS providers.
• IaaS should be provided globally (outside its home region), with the possibility of cashless payment, consolidated billing, with support and documentation in English.

In addition, customers expect the technical maturity of providers, support for critical processes and large-scale workloads. Technical maturity implies:

• software-defined computing power, storage, and network;
• control, monitoring and auto-scaling tools;
• hyper-scalable architecture, creating real-time instances, providing Docker containers in seconds;
• VM at least 16 vCPU and 128 GB RAM;
• SLA at least 99.9%;
• Ensuring information security while expanding the resources of the company's data center to the cloud;
• support for many users and API keys, a role-based access model.

2017

Gartner: Up 29.5% to $23.5 billion The leader is growing slower than the market

On August 1, 2018, analysts Gartner released some results of a study of the global market for IaaS (infrastructure as a service) services. Its volume in 2017 reached $23.5 billion, an increase of 29.5% compared to 2016.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains the largest provider of public cloud services IaaS, which in 2017 increased revenues in the market by 25%, but its share decreased from 53.7% to 51.8% due to the fact that competitors are growing faster.

This is how Microsoft ended 2017 with an almost twofold increase in IaaS revenue and an increase in market share from 8.7% to 13.3%.

Alibaba still closes the top three, with annual sales of infrastructure-as-a-service services jumping 62.7% to $1.1 billion, which corresponds to 4.6% of the total market under consideration.

Google's share reached 3.3%, followed by IBM with a 1.9 percent rate. These American companies also showed growth in IaaS revenue higher than the market as a whole. Thus, in the five largest providers of IaaS services, only AWS has this business growing slower than the entire market. Gartner notes that Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba and Google control about 73% of IaaS revenue.

The four leading providers offer strong IaaS products and have recorded solid growth, as the introduction of IaaS has covered the vast majority of organizations, and cloud services are becoming available in new regions and countries, comments Gartner Research Director Sid Nag. - Cloud-related IT costs now account for more than 20% of total IT budgets in cloud computing companies. Many of these organizations now deploy clouds to support production environments and business-critical operations.[6]

BI Intelligence Q1 Data

Alphabet's revenue (a holding of which Google is a part) increased on an annualized basis by 22%, reaching $24.8 billion. Of these, approximately 12%, or 3.1 billion, came from a division that promotes cloud services^[7]

Amazon's hosting services, distributed data warehouses, virtual server leases and computing capabilities are also growing in importance. The share of AWS in Amazon's revenue was approximately 10% (3.6 out of $35.7 billion). Microsoft's share of the cloud business in revenue was equal to 29% (6.8 out of 23.56 billion dollars).

AWS holds 45% of the global market. IaaS This is more than Microsoft's joint shares Google , and. In Q1, IBM AWS'operating profit rose from 604 to $ 890 million (per 43%) from a year ago. With the cloud division generating most of the company's profits, Amazon intends to further diversify its products and relies less on e-commerce.

According to BI Intelligence, Microsoft ranks second in public cloud revenue with an 11% share in the last three months of last year. During this period, sales revenue from Microsoft Azure and the cloud version of Office 365 jumped 93% and 45%, respectively. The growth of Microsoft's cloud business in January-March 2017 was due to the company's large base of existing customers and the attraction of new customers. Many vendors use Microsoft Azure Stack to provide hybrid solutions to customers . The software giant is gradually shifting its focus away from premium software in favor of cloud products.

Alphabet's market share is 6% - it closes the top three, but at the same time, revenues received from the cloud business are not disclosed in its financial statements. The holding includes them in the column "other revenues," which also include sales of Google Play applications, smartphones and other equipment. According to the results of the first quarter, these directions brought the search giant a record growth - 49%.

Despite the dominance of Amazon, other companies do not abandon attempts to take away part of the "cloud pie" from it - for this they reduce the cost of object storage services. The beginning of the price war in the cloud industry can be considered 2014, and Amazon itself laid the foundation for it. Then the company began to cut prices for standard Amazon Simple Storage Service storage (by 6-22%) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (by 50%). It was followed by Microsoft, which reduced the cost of disk space by 28%.

2016

BI Intelligence: Up 38% to $22bn; Amazon leadership

In 2016, the global cloud services market IaaS (Infrastructure as Services) grew by 38%, according to Intelligence BI.

Experts estimated the cost of IaaS solutions on a global scale at the end of 2016 at $22 billion. In 2015, they were measured at $16 billion, and three years earlier 13, 9 and 6 billion dollars, respectively.

According to the researchers, the growing demand for cloud computing of the IaaS species is due to the advantages of technology such as flexibility, cost-effectiveness, fast elasticity, greater network access and the ability to use only truly necessary power. In addition, the business is willingly mastering IaaS due to increasing security requirements and high maintenance costs for local IT resources.

In 2016, 67% of companies surveyed by BI Intelligence used infrastructure rental services in the cloud, while in 2015 there were only 19%.

According to BI Intelligence, the leader in the global IaaS market at the end of 2016 is still Amazon Web Services (AWS). Next are Google, IBM and Microsoft, which were able to take away only a small part of the market share from Amazon. In this regard, analysts believe that only smaller competitors will be able to weaken Amazon's dominant position in the industry.

A research report published in November 2017 also said that hybrid cloud strategies will gain momentum in the short term, however, the market is likely to gravitate mainly towards public clouds. This is due to the reduced costs of cloud providers, which thanks to this create solutions that meet the basic requirements of customers, as well as the fact that business methods like Agile and data analysis are increasingly dependent on the benefits that public clouds provide.^[8]

IDC data

Gartner Data

On September 27, 2017, the analytical company Gartner published the results of a study of the global market IaaS (infrastructure as a service). Amazon has strengthened its lead, but many nearby competitors are growing faster.

According to Gartner estimates, in 2016, global spending on IaaS solutions reached $22.2 billion, which is 31.4% more than a year earlier.

The global public cloud services market continues to grow with projects to digitally transform businesses, consolidate data centers and migrate applications to the cloud, says Gartner Research Director Sid Nag. - To take advantage of these opportunities, strategic technology planners must build appropriate products and partner ecosystems.

Amazon remains the global market leader for IaaS. Moreover, the company's share increased to 44.2% in 2016 from 39.8% in 2015, which was facilitated by a wide client base: Amazon leases cloud startups, medium-sized companies that want to abandon traditional applications, as well as large corporations that migrate to the cloud.

Researchers predict increased competitive pressure on Amazon and lower market share as providers of non-hyperscale services look to boost revenue for their services and other Iaas market leaders grow faster.

So, in 2016, Microsoft's revenue (takes 2nd place in the market) from IaaS rose by 61.1%, from Alibaba (3rd) and Google (4th) - by 126.5% and 100%. Alibaba dominates the Chinese cloud market, and also actively strengthens its position in the international arena. In 2016, Alibaba announced the launch of data centers in Europe, Australia, Japan and the Middle East.^[9]

RightScale Data

RightScale 2016, State of Cloud Report

Forrester Data

2015

Forrester forecast

Gartner forecast

In 2015, the global IaaS market will grow by 32.8% to $16.5 billion, and over the five years from 2014 to 2019, the average annual growth rate will be 29.1%, analysts believe Gartner (data from spring 2015). Despite the rapid growth of the market, concentration occurs on it. The market is divided among themselves by several largest providers - first of all, Amazon Web Services as well as. Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine

In 2014, the growth in the workload of public clouds by IaaS assignments for the first time in absolute terms exceeded the growth in the workload of internal corporate systems, analysts say. Organizations should work with IaaS cloud services in bimodal mode, moving from deployment with a focus on flexibility and speed to deployment of systems that provide efficiency, security, and scalability.

According to forecasts, Gartner the global cloud infrastructure services market () IaaS will reach a volume of 42.7 billion dollars USA by 2019. ^[10]

IDC Forecast

According to the data IDC , it is projected IaaS to increase more than three times by 2017, twice as much as managed and SaaS hosting platform services. And as a result, by 2018, a quarter of all IT resources placed in DPC will belong to service providers (service providers).

2014

IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing Study

2013

According to Synergy Research Group, in the second quarter of 2013, the global market for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) services grew by 47% to $ 2.25 billion. At the same time, the main part of the market - 64% - falls on IaaS^[11]

Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains the leader, with sales increasing faster than the market. Thus, in the second quarter, its turnover in the IaaS/PaaS region increased by 52%, and the share reached 28%. As a result, the gap from the closest competitors - IBM, Microsoft and Google - has become even greater.

Analysts note that although this troika has achieved a very fast growth rate, none of its participants manages to catch up with Amazon. Now their combined market share is only 63% of Amazon's share.

Salesforce is in fourth place, the results of which are about the same as the participants in this troika. In total, more than 60 service providers operate in this market, including Rackspace, Fujitsu, HP, etc.

As for the geographical distribution of the market, more than half (52%) are in North America, 21% each in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region and 5% in Latin America.

Amazon's clear lead is also indicated by Gartner's data: Amazon has more than five times the computing power of all the other 14 companies included in the 'magic quadrant' combined.

Considering that despite the huge computing power, Amazon's market share in money is 28%, we can conclude that the cost of its services is much lower than that of competitors.

2012

Gartner Data

Gartner has prepared a new study of the global market for IaaS ( infrastructure as a service) services in Magic Quadrant format. According to the company's analysts, this market is still immature, it is in its infancy. Therefore, choosing a cloud infrastructure provider for customers is not an easy task.

Source: Gartner, December 2011

Among the leaders are providers of public services IaaS according to Gartner (see definitions of market participants) of the company: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Savvis, CSC, Terremark, Bluelock. According to analysts, these providers provide an excellent level of offers, serve a wide range of services, have sufficient experience of successful actions in the market.

Among the contenders for leadership, providers providing a good level of service, companies, Navisite OpSource, GoGrid and. As IBM part of the visionaries - Rackspace and Joyent.

Niche players (relatively new market participants) in the quadrant are represented by iLand, Tier3, Hosting.com, SoftLayer, Carpathia Hosting, Virtacore Systems, AT&T, Tata Communications and Datapipe.

The most common aspects of the use of IaaS in public cloud computing are as follows:

• Development and testing environments
• High-performance computing and batch processing
• sites with access to Internet and web applications (having or not having an architecture created specifically for "clouds");
• non-critical applications for internal use in the enterprise.

These areas of use are typically beyond the needs of the organization's infrastructure.

However, many enterprises, especially midsize enterprises, eventually consider transferring loads from their data centers to the cloud infrastructure, preferring to rely on such services. And although the use of cloud IaaS is usually a tactical solution, many organizations are already trying to find strategic partners.

However, Gartner believes that this market is not yet ripe to determine the final strategy, and recommends that potential customers focus on finding a cloud service provider that meets their current specific needs. Analysts believe that in most cases, companies, probably meeting the need for a variety of cloud services, will be forced to use the services of several cloud IaaS providers.

Key Market Aspects That Cloud Customers Need to Know

The same conditions are not suitable for everyone. The understanding of the client needs of providers develops as the market develops. Workloads vary in their availability and performance needs, and generally depend on the complexity of the application infrastructure. Customer requirements vary in the importance they place on security, maintenance, and ease of use, as well as in how much management customers are willing to take on their needs, compared to what they will provide to the IaaS provider. Although some providers are already beginning to pay attention to differentiating customer needs when implementing the targeted approach, nevertheless, most service providers still implement the attitude towards the client as "one size fits all," which can make it difficult to correctly choose the level of service for a certain set of business and technical needs.

IaaS providers often focus on a business suitable for the "enterprise" category. And although there are already many new entrants in the market, aimed primarily at the small business sector, most providers are deployed to face midsize companies or technology companies (in particular, those doing business online, such as companies selling SaaS services ).

The IaaS market is complex, developing quickly, but still very immature. There are differences in the provision of services, so that the assessment of the provider must be carried out carefully and with due diligence. Service providers themselves are developing very quickly, implementing many new functions and capabilities for customers every month. New market participants continue to generate new offers, and existing suppliers expand those segments that serve. Many providers have ambitious plans to seize market share, but they can only be fulfilled taking into account the aggressive pace of its development.

2012-2016 PAC Forecast: Global Cloud Infrastructure Market to Triple in Five-Year Period

The global IaaS market volume in 2012 will be about 30 billion euros, compared to 21 billion euros in 2011. And in 2016, it could reach 70 billion euros, actually tripling in five years. Such data are provided in the report of the analytical agency PAC, published on November 16, 2012.

According to the PAC report, dynamic growth is observed in all segments of the IaaS market, be it government or corporate, autonomous or hosting, or other outsourcing contracts for the provision of infrastructure services as a cloud service.

According to analysts, the IaaS PAC market in the near future will remain mainly a service provided for private "clouds," while the related segment, to a SaaS greater extent, provides services in public "clouds."

The main consumer and initiator of the further development of the IaaS market is the United States. Thus, the volume of consumption of IaaS services in this country in private "clouds" is one and a half times higher than in the EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East, Africa) and slightly more than twice as high as in the Asia-Pacific region. If we talk about public "clouds," then the states provide 2 times more cloud infrastructure services than in Europe, and 4 times more than in Asia.

At the same time, analysts note a surge in interest in IaaS from India, where now the volume of consumption is about 40 thousand petabytes of services, and by 2020 this figure may reach 2.3 million petabytes, which is twice the global level.

PAC predicts IaaS market growth by a public cloud model of 20-30% annually by 2015 in all regions.

One of the factors in the success of IaaS PAC is considered the simplicity of the service as such. "Traditional IT services are based on foundation, complexity and heterogeneity, while cloud services are standard and easy to use. That's why most suppliers are now trying to master the "clouds," seeing them as a new source of revenue, "said the leading analyst of the direction outsourcing cloud computing PAC and Carsten Leclair.

Among other strengths of IaaS, analysts note flexibility, scalability, sane cost. At the same time, there are a number of European countries, for example, France and Germany, which are distrustful of IaaS due to not fully worked out, in their opinion, issues of security and confidentiality, the lack of standards for storing and processing information, and gaps in legislation.

At the same time, Carsten Leclair urges companies to take a more balanced approach to the issue of using Iaas services, having first worked out other options. "Before you start using IaaS, your company must answer the questions clearly: Do you need cloud services? are they able to manage such services? Is the company satisfied with the terms of confidentiality and security?, " Leclair warns.

2011

According to In-Stat's forecast, the cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market will reach $4 billion in the next four years. The IaaS boom is a big opportunity for VARs who can offer solutions working on top of that infrastructure. The recent explosion of purchases in the IaaS market (Verizon bought Terremark for $1.4 billion, CenturyLink buys Savvis, Citrix just announced the purchase of Cloud.com) is showing rapidly growing interest.

"Growth is expected across all segments of public cloud services," writes In-Stat analyst Greg Potter. - Many SaaS applications have existed for a long time, but only now, with the arrival of full platforms for applications such as Google Apps and Force.com, they gain the necessary visibility among customers to begin their formation in the software market. Infrastructure as a service also meets with interest, especially among SMBs. "

As cloud infrastructure matures, In-Stat expects the SaaS market to grow by an impressive 142% between 2010 and 2015, and this growth will advance public cloud services in general, including IaaS, SaaS and Platform as a Service (PaaS), by another 153% over the same period.

Small customers accept the cloud faster than companies of a different size. Organizations with a staff of 5 to 99 people. - the fastest growing segment in the public cloud market, and costs here will grow from $2.5 billion in 2010 to $6.6 billion in 2015. According to In-Stat, small firms already account for more than half of the SaaS and IaaS markets.

In-Stat also names five verticals that will lead in the adoption of IaaS by 2011: hospitality, food, healthcare, social services and retail. At the very bottom of the list are mining, forestry, fishing, agricultural services and utilities.

According to Gartner, the IaaS market is on the verge of significant growth with a global estimate forecast from $3.7 billion in 2011 to $10.5 billion in 2014.

In Gartner's new outlook for IaaS, Lydia Leong, Gartner's vice president of research, said: "We are still at the beginning of the implementation cycle of cloud computing using IaaS. This is a rapidly growing market that reflects the transformation in the IT infrastructure over 10-20 years. However, the next five years have provided vendors with ample opportunities to increase income, and they are also a critical period for them, when it is necessary to lay the foundations for future development. "

Cloud IaaS (infrastructure as a service) is an opportunity provided to the consumer to provide processing, storage, networks and other basic computing resources, where the consumer has the opportunity to deploy and run any software that can include operating systems and applications.

At the same time, the consumer does not manage and does not control the basic infrastructure of the "cloud," but manages operating systems, storage and deployment of applications, and possibly has limited control over some network components (such as firewalls).

IaaS can be provided by your own IT organization (sourcing) or an external service provider (outsourcing). The underlying infrastructure can be located in the organization's data center or external data center. Such infrastructure may be available to one customer ("private cloud"), distributed to a customer community ("cloud community"), or available to all customers of the provider as a whole ("public cloud").

Since this market and related technologies are not yet mature, customers often agree on what is available now, not what they really need or want. Today, they tend to make mostly tactical decisions rather than long-term strategic commitments.

Lydia Leong warns that because customer engagement matters at this stage, service providers need to work to preserve them, as do the needs for their development. "IaaS startups, web hosters, data center holders and customers, are all competitors in the IaaS cloud computing market. However, in many providers, the market vision is limited to the private cases of use that they observe in sales channels and this can lead to a narrowing of understanding, "the analyst said.

In fact, the requirements and use cases for IaaS cloud computing are diverse and rapidly evolving. Cloud IaaS represents a range of services where there is no "one size fits all," and no service provider works successfully in all market segments, "she concluded.

She believes that in order to understand the evolution of the market, providers must first understand what potential customers intend to do with the IaaS cloud - both now and in the future. They should understand that customers are often not fully aware of their needs or options available in the market and, as a result, the importance of trainings increases.

Vendors should also be prepared to look at different customer groups in each segment: IT operations, other technicians (e.g., application developers, engineers, and scientists), and business customers, each with different needs. The needs of the organization (and the customer) can also change over time, for example, the initial deployment of cloud IaaS is often directed by application developers, but as the consumption of the organization increases, the consolidated search for service sources becomes an area of ​ ​ IT operations.

Leong expressed the vision of cloud IaaS as an emerging, emerging market, where service providers, in order to realize most of their potential, must remain flexible, ready to respond quickly to changing market requirements and agile in introducing new technologies.

Notes