The cloud infrastructure-as-a-service market continued its rapid growth in 2018, according to new research released by Gartner Inc. today, as spending reached $32.4 billion globally.

This figure represents a 31.3% increase over 2017. By Gartner’s estimate, more than three-quarters of the spending went to the IaaS market’s five biggest players, up about four percentage points from the year before. And unsurprisingly, market leader Amazon Web Services Inc. captured the lion’s share of revenues, with the analyst firm putting its 2018 market share at 47.8%.

AWS enjoys a comfortable lead over the competition. Microsoft Corp., which ranks as the second-largest IaaS provider with estimated 2018 revenues of $5.04 billion, trailed behind with a 15.5% share, according to Gartner. But Microsoft and other contenders started gaining ground on AWS in 2018.

AWS’ estimated 47.8% market share in 2018 marks a small but noticeable decline from the 49.4% Gartner attributed to the cloud giant the year before. This drop is the result of the fact that, though the provider continues to grow revenue at a respectable pace, some rivals have grown faster. In its earnings call this month, Amazon.com Inc. posted the slowest growth for AWS since it started reporting the unit’s financial results.

Microsoft, meanwhile, increased IaaS revenues by 61% in 2018. Alibaba Holdings Co. Ltd., which is the segment’s third-largest player thanks to its dominance of the Chinese market, in turn saw its cloud infrastructure revenue hit $2.49 billion thanks to what Gartner said was a 92.6% growth spurt.

Google LLC and IBM Corp. round out the list of the five biggest IaaS providers. Google was among the biggest  winners in 2018: It saw infrastructure spending on its cloud platform rise 60.2%, to $1.34 billion, and was recently bumped up a spot in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant ranking for the segment. Those gains are partially the fruit of Google Cloud Chief Executive Thomas Kurian’s efforts to make the platform more attractive for large enterprises. 

Gartner’s research suggests that the five leading players will only cement their hold on the market going forward. The companies saw aggregate growth of 39% from 2017 to 2018, well above the 11% of the rest of the provider ecosystem.

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