As the global economy in general suffers the consequences of the current pandemic, the cloud computing sector is doing well. According to Canalys, spending on cloud infrastructure services hit a new record in the first quarter of 2020, increasing by 34% to $ 31.0 billion, year-on-year from $ 23.1 billion for the same period last year. However, this increase in large cloud services companies was offset by a slowdown in large SAP migration projects, hybrid cloud deployments, and others.

According to Canalys, this growth in cloud services has been stimulated by the fact that organizations around the world have started to work remotely to adapt to the covid-19 pandemic that has imposed itself on the whole world since this year. As a result, a strong demand for online collaboration tools, e-commerce and cloud services for consumers (business, schools and individuals) has resulted in a sharp increase in the consumption of cloud infrastructures, which has benefited all the main cloud service providers.

It’s no secret that many consumers and businesses have turned to cloud-based services and remote work tools. Netflix has doubled its forecast of new customers in the last quarter, while Microsoft has announced that it has increased its daily active user base for Microsoft Teams by 70% to 75 million today. The Zoom videoconferencing platform, meanwhile, saw its daily active user base increase from 10 million in December to more than 200 million in March and to 300 million in April. Google Meet has exceeded 100 million active users per day – with 3 million new users per day.

All major cloud service companies released their figures for the first quarter of 2020 last week. Amazon Web Service crossed the $ 10 billion mark for the first time, up 33% from last year. Amazon maintained its leading position in cloud computing services, accounting for 32% of the total market in the first quarter. Elsewhere, Microsoft Azure increased 59%, taking its share to 17%. Capacity limits have been reached for Azure in some markets, although this is due to unprecedented use of its Teams video conferencing service, which has had no direct impact on Azure’s revenues. It also forced Microsoft to restrict consumption of certain services and new customers.

Google Cloud maintained third place in the global cloud infrastructure market in the first quarter of 2020, followed closely by Alibaba Cloud. According to Canalys, these two companies held a 6% share of the total market for cloud infrastructure services. Google Cloud has seen good adoption of its data and analytics platform in some of its main sectors, especially the public sector, healthcare, service providers and financial services, although this has been partially offset by the weakness of other segments.

For example, although Google’s tools, such as Duo and YouTube video chat, have become essential for many users this year, the company is not charging them, the company said when it announced its 1Q20 results. . Likewise, Alibaba Cloud was one of the first cloud service providers to launch initiatives to support companies affected by containment in China, with free credits and access to its DingTalk collaboration suite.

Source : Canalys