Cloud Services VS COVID-19: How has the pandemic affected the Cloud Hosting industry?

Post Syndicated from Andy Haine original https://www.anchor.com.au/blog/2020/10/cloud-services-vs-covid-19-how-has-the-pandemic-affected-the-cloud-hosting-industry/

2020 has surely been a questionable year for the human race. An unexpected hail storm, if you will. But for the cloud services market? According to recent statistics, not a cloud in the sky.

Despite the unprecedented chaos that has befallen many facets of our daily lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, the world’s cloud spending has continued to significantly and consistently increase year-on-year. When it comes to the growth of cloud services, 2020 is no exception.

Ultimately, this makes sense. Demand and reliance on digital services has greatly increased this year as many businesses hurry to transform their bricks and mortar presences into digital income streams, in an attempt to survive such uncertain times. Grocery and home goods purchases, learning, working and even many social activities are now conducted primarily online as we fight the global challenges of COVID-19.

According to recent research published by Synergy Research Group, cloud spending passed $30 billion in the second quarter of 2020, an increase of $7.5 billion when compared to the same time last year. In terms of region-specific growth, cloud services have continued to grow steadily all around the world, seemingly regardless of how each region has uniquely been affected by the pandemic.

Of the largest Cloud service providers, AWS has continued to maintain a dominant lead in market share, steadily towering over Google and Microsoft’s cloud service offerings. At the time of writing, the market share is dispersed approximately as follows:

Amazon AWS: 33%

Microsoft Azure: 18%

Google Cloud Platform: 9%

Some of the smaller providers that trail this list include Alibaba Cloud, IBM, Salesforce, Tencent and Oracle.

Cloud infrastructure market share figures, including IaaS, PaaS, and Hosted Private Cloud: Q2 2020

For those of you who may have a penchant for the numbers, we’ve delved a little further into the figures for Logging as a service (LaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and hosted private cloud in 2020.

Public IaaS and PaaS services have maintained the majority of the market share, which grew by 34% in Q2. The lead that Amazon, Google, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba, and IBM hold over their competitors is even more significant in public cloud, where they control close to 80% of the market combined.

Regarding their findings, chief analyst at Synergy Research, John Dinsdale, had this to say:

“As far as cloud market numbers go, it’s almost as if there were no COVID-19 pandemic raging around the world. As enterprises struggle to adapt to new norms, the advantages of public cloud are amplified.” 

“The percentage growth rate is coming down, as it must when a market reaches enormous scale, but the incremental growth in absolute dollar terms remains truly impressive. The market remains on track to grow by well over 30% in 2020.”

As their findings indicate, the global pandemic certainly hasn’t slowed down the growth rate of Cloud services. With the pressure of more and more companies being forced online, or to shift their entire organisation to being able to work from home, the need to migrate to the cloud is clearly far greater than ever before.

John Dinsdale also had this to say:

“If anything, the pandemic has helped to highlight some of the main benefits of public cloud,” 

Chief among those benefits is the flexibility and scalability that cloud hosting offers. In a time where millions of workers have had to change the way they conduct their daily lives, and companies have had to quickly shift resources, the ability to be able to scale horizontally or vertically to accommodate for that shift in lifestyle is more important than ever. Where other industries have been devastated by COVID-19, the cloud services industry has proven to be more durable, largely due to its capacity to assist companies in tackling the numerous challenges that a pandemic inflicts.

Ready to tap in?

If you have been considering a switch to the cloud, or believe that your business could benefit from additional scalability, flexibility and durability during the new era of heightened online commerce, we strongly suggest consulting with a certified AWS partner, to make your move as smooth, secure and cost-efficient as possible.

Cloud services have proven to be one of the most resilient (and thriving) industries in a COVID-19 world. This can also be said of most companies who have utilised it to bring their businesses up-to-speed and online. If you’d like to tap into this success for your business alike, get in touch with one of our AWS-qualified experts today to learn how we can assist you.

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