As AWS loses its market edge, it delivers clear warning signs for all businesses with a stake in the public cloud

There is no doubt that Amazon Web Services is the dominant force in the cloud computing market. From what is considered to be the Big Three in cloud computing, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, AWS has stayed on top when it comes to their share of the market.

However, over the past few years, Amazon’s main competitors have been enjoying an increase in their market creep, while AWS continues to dwindle in their market share. According to a report from Gartner, Amazon had 38.9% market share in 2021 compared to their 40.8% share in 2020, while Microsoft increased their percent share by 1.4% to have 21.1% market share. These numbers show a continued trend of AWS as they compete against market forces and their competition to try to maintain their lead position in the cloud computing industry.

Amazon as a whole has been affected by the same economic forces affecting other industries. But while the cloud industry shows continued growth, AWS’ growth in revenue is slowing down. In the first quarter of 2022 their reported earnings of $18.44 represented 36% growth in revenue over Q1 2021. However, this was slower than the 39.5% revenue increase posted in Q4 of 2021. Despite these trends, AWS does continue to grow with the overall market, maintaining their market share at 33% from the last estimate by Synergy.

For the future of AWS, there are several other factors that threaten their current grip on the market. Compared to Microsoft and Google’s cloud offerings, AWS causes greater concerns when it comes to vendor lock-in. Their main hybrid cloud platform, Outposts, is a great example of this issue. The Outposts cloud platform requires hardware to be purchased from AWS and only supports AWS cloud services. These limitations make their cloud services less attractive, given the limiting factors to users’ choices.

Finally, alternative cloud providers outside the big three continue to grow and provide more specific use cases for their services. Cloud platforms like CloudKey^SM are an attractive alternative for many companies that are trying to have more specialized offerings. While the adoption of alternative cloud providers may take away market share from all three of the hyperscale companies, AWS will most likely see the biggest change as this trend continues.

CloudKey^SM is an incredible cloud platform that offers comparable services to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, without the exorbitant and unpredictable costs that have become associated with their services. CloudKey^SM has been designed using cutting-edge technology, and is customizable to fit a company’s cloud computing needs. Furthermore, it is multi-site, live workload replicated from day one, allowing for greater security and flexibility. By comparison, AWS and the others charge an additional fee for these types of services to be added on, often making them too expensive for most organizations. To see how CloudKey^SM can help grow your company and save you money at the same time, explore this overview for options that fit your needs.