[LINK] Four Companies Control 67% of the World's Cloud Infrastructure

[Stephen Loosley]

Four Companies Control 67% of the World's Cloud Infrastructure

Even in the middle of a pandemic, companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle continue to thrive thanks to their control over the cloud infrastructure market.

By Jason Cohen   PCMag Australia > Business > IT and DevOps Tools > Cloud Infrastructure
https://au.pcmag.com/old-cloud-infrastructure/85589/4-companies-control-67-of-the-worlds-cloud-infrastructure


When we talk about regulating big tech, the discussion usually centres on online privacy and location tracking, but we never seem to discuss the control these companies have over a vast majority of the internet.

We use free apps and services every day but fail to mention where all that data is stored — in the cloud. If we want big tech to have less control over our daily lives, maybe we should start worrying about the stranglehold these few companies have over our data.

According to data collected by the Synergy Research Group, four companies own 67% of the world's $130 billion cloud market. (FY 2020)

Leading the pack by a large margin is Amazon Web Services, which enjoys a  32% market share against the competition. This is followed by the  20% share by Microsoft's Azure infrastructure. So these two companies make up 52% of the market.

Behind the two dominant companies, Google Cloud at 9% and Alibaba Cloud at 6% round out the top four, which own over half of the overall market.

After that comes, IBM  Cloud (5%), Salesforce (3%), Tencent Cloud (2%), and Oracle Cloud (2%) making up 12% of the market combined.

Between the infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service schemes employers subscribe to, and the hosted private cloud services we use every day, companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Alibaba have ultimate control over our data.

Google may not be viewing everything you upload to Google Drive, for instance, but these companies do gain access to our personal data through the free services you use.

In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, cloud infrastructure services brought in a total of $37 billion as the world solidified its work from home Covid setup. This was a $4 billion jump from the previous quarter, proving that these companies continue to thrive off our data while other businesses suffer.

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