Amazon Web Services Inc. has retained its position as top dog in the public cloud infrastructure services market by some distance from its closest rivals, according to new data today from Synergy Research Group.

The research firm said third-quarter data shows that Amazon’s lead stretches across all four of the world’s major regions, with Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC coming in second and third, respectively.

Synergy ranks the public cloud providers according to their infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service revenues. It explained that it chooses this method because IaaS and PaaS account for the bulk of public cloud revenue, with the remainder coming from the much smaller managed and hosted private cloud service markets.

Amazon’s dominance of the public cloud market is perhaps best illustrated by its continued lead in Asia. The Asia Pacific region is a tough sell for U.S. firms due to the Chinese market, where the prevalence of local competitors such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Alibaba Cloud subsidiary provides extremely stern competition. Indeed, AWS is nowhere to be seen in the Chinese market, where the top five cloud providers are all local companies.

Still, AWS managed to hold off the challenge posed by Alibaba to take the No. 1 spot in APAC overall, with the latter coming in second place. AWS also dominated the world’s other regions, but Alibaba was nowhere to be seen as Microsoft and Google took the second and third positions in North America, Europe and the Middle East, and Latin America.

Overall, Synergy said, AWS currently takes home 40 percent of all worldwide IaaS and PaaS revenue, with Microsoft and Google accounting for 25 percent more between them. IBM Corp., Salesforce.com Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. fill out the other top five slots in the worldwide rankings, the last thanks to its position in China.

John Dinsdale, Synergy’s chief analyst and research director, said the American firms are unlikely ever to cede their dominant position at the top of the cloud market.

“There will remain opportunities for smaller cloud providers to serve niche markets, especially focused on single countries or local regions, but those companies cannot hope to challenge the market leaders,” Dinsdale said. “China will continue to be an exception to the rule, but outside of China, this is a global game requiring massive scale.”

Image: Synergy Research