Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services in the fourth quarter of 2017 leaped by 46 percent to more than $13 billion from the previous year, according to a new report released Friday by Synergy Research Group.

Synergy attributed the rapid rise in spending to the growth of major cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Google LLC and Microsoft Corp., which all posted strong quarterly results and increased their overall market share.

IBM Corp. saw its share of the cloud infrastructure market stay flat, while most smaller providers lost market share in the last quarter, Synergy said.

AWS remains the top dog in terms of revenues. The company pulled in more revenue than its four biggest competitors combined, in spite of the massive gains made by Microsoft.

Meanwhile, Alibaba saw its revenues double, propelling it into Synergy’s top five rankings for the first time.

For the full year, cloud infrastructure revenues grew by 44 percent, with the public infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service segments accounting for the bulk of the rise. Both segments grew by over 50 percent in the fourth quarter.

John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy, said the rise in cloud infrastructure spending was much higher than his firm had anticipated.

“As demand for cloud services blossoms, the leading cloud providers all have things to be pleased about and they are setting a fierce pace that most chasing companies cannot match,” Dinsdale said. “Smaller companies can still do well by focusing on specific applications, industry verticals or geographies, but overall this is a game that can only be played by companies with big ambitions, big wallets and a determined corporate focus.”

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