Amazon’s "Amazon Web Services" (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure are in a global land grab, according to cloud expert Adrian Cockcroft. He spoke at the annual Structure Conference last week, shared a tightly focused “state of the cloud” presentation, where he expressed that the tech and investor community is likely underestimating the potential of the AWS offering.
Sitting in the audience with my media pass, I listened attentively, as did 600 others, to Cockcroft’s current assessment and predictions of what’s to come for cloud computing. “Amazon could be growing even faster than current analyst projections of 80% per year,” Cockcroft said. He states that Amazon is in the lead; with Microsoft Azure in second, Google in third.
Over the last few quarters, Amazon has reported increasing revenues for its AWS to the tune of $7B.
Cockcroft reviews his 2014 assessment and 2015 “state of the cloud” predictions on the Structure blog. He further explains that AWS is in the lead, but you can see that Microsoft, IBM, and Google, among many others, are not going to let this opportunity pass them by. Take a look at their financial updates on page two.
IBM’s 8K from Q2:
“Our cloud revenue was up over 75 percent year to year. On a trailing twelve-month basis, our cloud revenue was $7.7 billion. This is a demonstration of high growth in the higher-value cloud opportunities across public, private and hybrid. We had terrific performance in our cloud foundational and as-a-Service offerings.”
Microsoft’s Q3 announcement:
“Commercial cloud revenue grew 106% (up 111% in constant currency) driven by Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM Online, and is now on an annualized revenue run rate of $6.3 billion.”
For Google, at the Structure Conference, we heard from Google executive Urs Hölzle who thinks his company might go through a similar transition to AWS (meaning their major revenue source could change). Hölzle reiterated a goal to have cloud revenue at Google outpace ad revenue by the end of the decade, as reported Wednesday by Bloomberg.
To put cloud computing industry growth speed in perspective, I like to track Forbes contributor Louis Columbus. One of his recent posts: 7 Insights And Predictions From IDG's 2015 Enterprise Cloud Computing Survey offers these growth stats:
- 90% of enterprises are relying on APIs in their cloud integration plans for 2016.
- 25% of total IT budgets will be allocated to cloud computing in 2016.
Some other recent cloud-related stats, demonstrating Amazon's growth and plans, come in their Q3 announcement:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted re:Invent, its fourth annual customer and partner conference, with more than 19,000 attendees and 38,000 streaming participants.
- AWS launched AWS IoT, a managed cloud platform that lets billions of connected devices such as mobile phones, cars, factory floors, aircraft engines, sensor grids, and more easily and securely interact with cloud applications and other devices. AWS IoT can support trillions of messages, and can process, route, and keep track of those messages to AWS endpoints and to other devices reliably and securely, even when the devices aren’t connected.
I spent a couple of days in San Francisco hearing the latest on the cloud (via the Structure Conference), as well as searching for how manufacturing and makers are using the cloud, for 3D, for IoT, and hardware ventures. Jeremiah Owyang, who spoke at Dassault’s 3D Experience Forum. I received media passes for both events.
Owyang had this to say and I shared it on Twitter: “The Collaborative economy is powered by the cloud. Make your products shareable. #3DXForum.” The cloud, it appears, is not just for the likes of Amazon, IBM, Google, and Microsoft, but for startups and small businesses as well. Take a look at Owyang's “Collaborative Honeycomb” chart here and you will see a glimmer of why Amazon's AWS is booming. I'd wager that many of those fast growing, collaborative-economy companies are using AWS or Azure.
