Cloud Computing Market
It has been found that the cloud computing market has begun to make substantial profits in 10 years since its creation. Not only the private but also the public sector is looking to make more use of cloud computing with security issues emerging and more and more IoT, big data and mobile services becoming available, and experts point out that the growth of the cloud computing market has just begun.
Amazon Web Services, the pioneer of the market, has already cemented its leading position and IBM and Microsoft have turned into cloud service providers. Google, a latecomer, is expanding its services as well in order to boost its market share from less than 5%. Its services include those related to its core technologies like machine learning to boot. South Korean companies, in the meantime, are still marginal while the global giants are increasingly penetrating the domestic cloud computing market.
According to industry sources, the sales of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform increased by 102% in the second quarter of this year. During the period, its total cloud business sales jumped to US$6.7 billion. Likewise, IBM’s cloud business sales increased by no less than 30% from a year ago in that quarter, led by cloud computing services, security software and the artificial intelligence Watson. Amazon Web Services recorded US$2.57 billion in sales in the first quarter, up 64% from a year earlier. Its earnings announcement for the following quarter is scheduled for July 28.
Market research firm Forrester Research recently forecast that Amazon Web Services’ and Microsoft’s cloud business sales for this year will reach US$10.8 billion and US$10.1 billion, respectively. On July 11, General Electric formed a strategic partnership with Microsoft so that its IoT platform Predix can be used on the cloud platform of Microsoft. This is merely one example of how rapidly cloud computing is spreading in people’s everyday lives and the business of private companies and public agencies alike as the first step of the ongoing digital innovation in which traditional industries are combined with the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data and mobile technology.