Who is winning the Cloud arms race?

The cloud has well and truly become an inherent part of IT. What was once a market disruptor; is now widely considered the norm. Next-gen start-ups and traditional businesses alike, now see the cloud as the expected approach in what has become a collective shift towards digital business. Organisations across the globe clearly see the value of the cloud, and the impact it has on their business so what is key for them now, is the ability for IT professionals and leaders to coordinate and develop an effective cloud strategy. 

With Gartner recently reporting that the global public cloud IaaS industry grew year on year by 30% to ￡18bn, (with Amazon securing over half of the global market) – it’s no wonder Microsoft, Google and Alibaba want to make sure they get their share of the pie. After all, it’s been reported that more than 20% of the total IT budget for organisations using the cloud is: cloud-directed spending.

With Microsoft’s cloud offering now growing at a faster rate than Amazon’s, they are beginning to close in on the lead that AWS holds. With a market of this scale, and only 4 main players in the game – it is imperative that they all continue to innovate. Every time they make an acquisition of a new capability, it tends to get added to their core functionality.  That’s why it has been coined a modern-day arms race. The big players are constantly adding new features and capabilities that then don’t necessarily result in additional charges for the customer. This level of competition is clearly a huge benefit to the end user.

With this level of growth, and with more and more widespread adoption of the cloud, sourcing for talent to facilitate these transformations is getting increasingly difficult. But it is certainly a great market to be a part of. Long gone are the days of IT being seen solely as a cost,  and with the scale of the global IaaS market as I mentioned before – it’s enabling more and more people to have rewarding careers helping organisations, while working collaboratively, and ultimately digitally transforming their business.

I am always keen to speak people from within the Tech and Digital space. Get in touch for a confidential conversation.