Amazon, Microsoft lead big gains in worldwide cloud-infrastructure spending
Olemedia

While rising inflation and concerns about an economic recession continue to weigh on some companies and their spending plans, the market for cloud-based computing services shows few signs of slowing down.
That's the assessment of tech research firm Canalys, which on Monday said worldwide spending on cloud infrastructure services in the second quarter of this year hit $62.3B, up by 33% in the same period in 2021. Canalys said the increase in demand for cloud infrastructure has been led by several factors such as are growing demand for data analytics, machine learnings, the consolidation of data centers and the migration of business applications to the cloud.
According to Canalys, cloud infrastructure services sales climbed by $15B from the second quarter a year ago, and by $6B from the first quarter of this year.
"Cloud remains the strong growth segment in tech," said Canalys vice president Alex Smith. "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."
The top three companies in the cloud-infrastructure market should come as no surprise to anyone in the cloud industry. According to Canalys, Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ:AMZN) claimed 31% of the cloud-infrastructure spending during the second quarter of this year, while Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Azure took 24% of the quarter's spending and Google Cloud (NASDAQ:GOOG) came in with an 8% share. Other providers combined for the remaining 37% of the cloud spending during the quarter.
Canalys said that beyond investments in capacity, software partnerships and capabilities will also be key factors for companies looking to meet their customers' cloud demands.
Last week, Amazon (AMZN) reported quarterly results led by strong growth in its AWS business, while Microsoft (MSFT) also delivered an upbeat earnings report that included 20% year-over-year growth in its intelligent cloud business.