Dive Brief:

• AWS remains atop competitors in the high-growth cloud infrastructure space, holding 33% of the market share during the Q1 2022, according to data from Synergy Research Group released Thursday. 
• Microsoft Azure commands 22% of the cloud market, picking up nearly two percentage points year over year, according to the firm. In the third spot, Google Cloud Platform holds 10% of the market, and is nearing 1% annual growth.
• Globally, cloud revenues grew 34% year-over-year to reach $53 billion in the first quarter of the year, the analyst firm found. In the last four quarters, the average growth rate for the market reached 36% despite the market's massive scale. 

Dive Insight

With its developer roots extending to address the niche industry needs of today, AWS holds the lead in the battle for cloud market ownership. 

Microsoft and Google, despite their market share growth, are still playing catchup, according to John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. 

"AWS had a huge first mover advantage as Microsoft and Google (and many others) were slow to recognize and focus on the emerging cloud market,'' said Dinsdale in an email. "By the time Microsoft and Google got serious about cloud, AWS was already flying high. They have never been able to match the scale of AWS, though they are slowly narrowing the gap."

Despite its lead, AWS faces headwinds from a few factors, including the pressure to maintain a resilient infrastructure, global economic shifts and the popularity of multicloud strategies. 

"There's a big price war going on right now," said Lee Sustar, principal analyst at Forrester. As supply chain pressures and rising cost of energy bring disruption to providers, including AWS, keeping up with generous enterprise discounts will prove difficult.

The cloud provider is also navigating a major leadership change, as former AWS CEO Andy Jassy took over as Amazon CEO and executive Adam Selipsky took the reins at AWS. Longtime CEO Jeff Bezos departed the company on July 5.

In the enterprise realm, multicloud adoption will likely make "displacement of one cloud provider to another harder to achieve," said Sustar. Instead, new cloud providers serve the role of an add-on, especially if adoption of a new provider brings new capabilities.

AWS is "now in an ever-more competitive situation," said Dinsdale. "But I’d argue that competition here is really healthy for all concerned. It keeps them all focused on what is best for their customers."