Google Cloud registered the largest growth of the big three cloud platform providers during Q2, with an annual increase of 45%, research firm Canalys has revealed.
According to the data, the platform accounted for 8% of the overall cloud infrastructure services spend during the quarter, reinforcing its position in the top three but remaining some distance behind rivals AWS (31%) and Microsoft Azure (24%).
Market leader AWS registered annual growth of 33%, while Microsoft Azure expanded by 40% over the same period of last year.
Despite a global struggle with inflation and rising interest rates, the figures underline the continuing high demand for cloud infrastructure services, as worldwide spending increased by 33% year-on-year to $62.3 billion.
That’s been driven by a cocktail of factors, including demand for data analytics and machine learning, data centre consolidation, application migration, cloud-native development, and service delivery.
Canalys also highlighted the growing use of industry-specific cloud applications as a key factor in the broader horizontal use cases seen across IT transformation. According to the data, expenditure was over $6 billion more than the previous quarter and $15 billion more than Q2 2021.
Despite Google’s strong Q2 growth, it’s the hyperscale battle between AWS and Microsoft Azure that continues to dominate the story at the very top of the market.
Azure has closed the gap, thanks to a record number of larger multi-year deals within the $100 million-plus and $1 billion-plus segments for Microsoft, as well as continuing to offer a diverse go-to-market ecosystem with a wide range of software partnerships.
“Cloud remains the strong growth segment in tech,” commented Canalys VP Alex Smith. “While opportunities abound for providers large and small, the interesting battle remains right at the top between AWS and Microsoft.
“The race to invest in infrastructure to keep pace with demand will be intense and test the nerves of the companies’ CFOs as both inflation and rising interest rates create cost headwinds.”
Looking ahead, AWS is planning to launch 24 availability zones across eight regions, while Microsoft is gearing up to launch ten new regions over the next year, with both providers increasing investment outside of the US.
Across the market, Canalys says software capabilities and partnerships will be vital in meeting customers’ cloud demands.
“Most companies have gone beyond the initial step of moving a portion of their workloads to the cloud and are looking at migrating key services,” said Canalys Research Analyst Yi Zhang.
“The top cloud vendors are accelerating their partnerships with a variety of software companies to demonstrate a differentiated value proposition.”
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