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UPDATED 01:48 EDT / AUGUST 01 2016

NEWS

AWS leads the cloud, but Google, IBM and Microsoft are all catching up

Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to lead the field in cloud infrastructure services, but rivals including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and IBM Softlayer are all catching up, according to analysis from Canalys.

According to the research house’s latest figures, 30.4 percent of all cloud infrastructure spending in Q2 2016 went to AWS. Canalys said AWS dominant market position was due to its “early mover advantage, aggressive pricing, broad geographic coverage and wide range of service offerings.”

However, Canalys added that its leadership position is being threatened by Azure, Google Cloud and Softlayer, which together accounted for 60.5 percent of all cloud infrastructure spending.

“Not every organisation and every workload will migrate to the cloud,” said Canalys Research Analyst Daniel Liu in a statement. “Cost is a major issue, but also compliance and regulations, security concerns, and application readiness are determining factors in cloud migration strategies. The adoption of hybrid cloud and on-premise solutions is prevalent as organisations seek to get the best of both worlds.”

The good news for public cloud providers is that there’s plenty of cash to go around, and there will likely be more to come too. Canalys noted that the overall cloud infrastructure market grew by 52.3 percent in Q2, which was attributed to the ongoing adoption of cloud systems. Overall, the total market was valued at $9.5 billion in Q2. Most of this money was spent by North American firms, which accounted for 55.3 percent of the global spending on cloud infrastructure, followed by EMEA with 24.7 percent.

“The need for scalable and on-demand infrastructure is being driven by application testing, development and hosting; content delivery, big data and analytics; machine learning, IoT, disaster recovery and back-up, plus storage,” Liu said.

Photo Credit: kcdcloud29 via Compfight cc

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