KUALA LUMPUR (June 4): The worldwide infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market grew 41.4% in 2021, to total US$90.9 billion, up from US$64.3 billion in 2020.
In a statement on Thursday (June 2), technology and consulting firm Gartner Inc said Amazon retained the No. 1 position in the IaaS market in 2021, followed by Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and Huawei.
Gartner vice president analyst Sid Nag said the IaaS market continues to grow unabated as cloud-native becomes the primary architecture for modern workloads.
“Cloud supports the scalability and composability that advanced technologies and applications require, while also enabling enterprises to address emerging needs such as sovereignty, data integration and enhanced customer experience,” said Nag.
Gartner said Amazon continued to lead the worldwide IaaS market with revenue of US$35.4 billion in 2021 and 38.9% market share.
Microsoft followed in the No. 2 position with 21.1% share and above-market growth, reaching over US$19 billion in IaaS revenue in 2021.
With many organisations already relying on Microsoft’s enterprise software and services, Azure has been positioned to capture opportunities across nearly every vertical market.
Alibaba was again the No. 3 IaaS public cloud provider worldwide with 9.5% market share and revenue of US$8.7 billion for 2021.
Gartner said while Alibaba continues to lead the Chinese cloud market, it is also poised to be the leading regional provider in Indonesia, Malaysia, and other emerging cloud markets, given its local market understanding and ability to serve as a bridge to digital commerce.
Nag said regional cloud ecosystems are becoming increasingly important amidst growing geopolitical fragmentation and emerging regulatory and compliance requirements, presenting an opportunity for providers with a strong regional presence.
Google Cloud saw the highest growth rate of the top five IaaS vendors, growing 63.7% in 2021 to reach US$6.4 billion in revenue.
This growth was driven by steadily increased adoption for traditional enterprise workloads as well as Google’s innovation in more cutting-edge capabilities such as artificial intelligence and Kubernetes container technologies, supported by an expansion of their partner ecosystem to reach a wider customer base.
Nag said the next phase of IaaS growth will be driven by customer experience, digital outcomes and the virtual-first world.
“Emerging technologies that can help businesses bring experiences closer to their customers, such as the metaverse, chatbots and digital twins, will require hyperscale infrastructure to meet growing demands for compute and storage power,” said Nag.