Dive Brief:

• Amazon Web Services now has a 45% share of the worldwide public IaaS market, according to new third quarter data released by Synergy Research Group. The cloud giant has twice as much market share as the the next three companies — Microsoft, Google and IBM — combined. 

• AWS also leads in the public PaaS market, though together Salesforce, Microsoft and IBM are within striking distance in that category.

• IBM currently leads the managed private cloud segment, followed by Amazon, Rackspace and NTT, according to the report. 

Dive Insight:

Microsoft and Google are now growing at a faster rate than AWS, according to Synergy, but AWS continues to hold an impressive lead over its rivals in the IaaS space. 

Though IaaS is the largest cloud category, public PaaS is growing the fastest. In particular, the Synergy found database, IoT and analytics PaaS segments "are all growing by 100% or more per year."

Overall, Synergy estimates quarterly cloud infrastructure service in all of the three categories brings in revenues worth more than $8 billion. The size of the market also leaves plenty of room for growth. Synergy expects the three major cloud categories to continue to grow at least 50% per year.

Some of the second tier players are starting to make headway against the incumbent leaders. John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group, said Alibaba (in the IaaS category) and Oracle (in PaaS area) are both currently seeing strong potential and growth.