Smaller public cloud providers losing share hand over fist, finds analyst

Gains made by Microsoft, Google and IBM leave 'others' category with 18 per cent markets share in Q4, according to analyst Synergy Research

The ‘long tail' of small and medium sized public cloud providers saw their collective marketshare fall dramatically in Q4 as the market's giants tightened their grip at the top.

That's according to the latest data from analyst Synergy Research, which found that cloud providers outside the largest 14 players saw their share of the market shrivel from 22 to 18 per cent year on year in Q4.

In contrast, the top four public cloud providers appear to be only tightening their stranglehold on a public cloud (ie public IaaS and public PaaS) market that reached over $7bn in Q4 and is growing at almost 50 per cent annually, according to Synergy.

Amazon Web Services remained the dominant player, with a flat marketshare of 40 per cent in Q4, the research house found. However, its three closest rivals - Microsoft, Google and IBM - increased their worldwide marketshare by almost five percentage points over last year to now account for 23 per cent of the market, Synergy's data shows.

The next ten providers saw their collective share dip one per cent, said Synergy, although it noted that two outfits that sit in this group - Alibaba and Oracle - continue to grow at "impressive rates".

"While a few cloud providers are growing at extraordinary rates, AWS continues to impress as a dominant market leader that has no intention of letting its crown slip," said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy.

"Achieving and maintaining a leadership position in this market takes huge ongoing investments in infrastructure, a continued expansion in the range of cloud services offered, strong credibility with the large enterprise sector, consistently strong execution, and the wholehearted and long-term backing of senior management. AWS is checking all of those boxes and any serious challengers need to do likewise."