Cloudy Forecast for AWS

• In the race for market share in the $800+ Billion cloud computing market, usage of Azure is catching up to AWS: While in 2017 AWS accounted for more than 60% of mentions of top cloud services skills in job postings, this number is down to 40% in July 2024. Meanwhile, Azure’s share has risen from 21% to 34%.
• Mentions of the technologies suggest that this trend is mostly linked to employers moving away from AWS in favor of Azure, as well as to an increased interest in candidates with general cloud computing skills, instead of AWS skills specifically.
• The major industries where Azure is catching up to AWS are Aerospace & Defense and Information Technology Services. Meanwhile, AWS remains the preferred cloud technology among new cloud adopters.

As companies continue their digital transformation, cloud solutions are steadily on the rise, driven by a surge in demand for AI-ready infrastructure. Major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are competing fiercely to expand their share in this dynamic and growing market, which is projected to surpass $800 billion in 2024. AWS has historically dominated the market, but recently it seems to have started to lose ground to Azure. This week, we use our workforce insights data to shed light on the evolving competitive dynamics in cloud computing, examining which companies are solidifying their leadership and which are gearing up to make significant strides.

Our analysis focuses on six major cloud providers—AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud—all of which offer primary cloud services. We begin by examining how the demand for these services has shifted over the past 7 years by looking at skill requirements in job postings. In 2017, AWS accounted for more than 60% of all mentions of major cloud services in job postings. However, by July 2024, this figure had declined to just 40%. Meanwhile, Microsoft Azure has steadily gained ground, increasing its share from 21% in 2017 to 34% in July 2024, narrowing the gap with AWS to just 6 percentage points.

Further analysis of the data reveals two significant trends that are linked to AWS’s decline. First, the share of job postings that exclusively mention AWS has dropped from 51% in 2017 to just 29% in 2024, while postings mentioning only Azure have doubled, reaching 22% in 2024. This shift suggests that some employers might be transitioning to Azure, possibly at AWS’s expense. Secondly, the share of postings that require cloud skills from multiple providers has risen by 6 percentage points, now accounting for nearly 29% of job postings in 2024. This indicates a growing demand for candidates with broad cloud expertise, rather than a focus on any single technology.

Read the full story here.

Cheers,

Anna A. | Economist at Revelio Labs