Dive Brief:

• The numbers are in and Amazon Web Services is still king of the cloud. Though the major cloud companies report quarterly results differently, Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains dominant in the cloud, posting fourth quarter revenue of $3.53 billion, up 47% year over year. 

• Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Azure cloud generated revenue of $3 billion in the most recent quarter, growing by 93% year over year, according to the company's December quarterly earnings report.

• Google doesn’t break out cloud revenue, but overall reported a 22% increase in revenue year over year.

Dive Insight:

It is worth noting that Microsoft and Google have quite a few services bundled in their earnings reports, so it is difficult to directly compare earnings. 

Enterprise appetite for cloud is strong, according to the latest earnings reports. AWS and Microsoft both nearly doubled their cloud income in the fourth quarter. Cloud now represents a strong area for all three companies, allowing them to thrive even as other areas of each company weakens.

Though Microsoft and Google look strong, AWS remains nearly untouchable, according to Synergy Research, which conducted a quick initial analysis of the quarterly cloud market based on the latest results. "While Microsoft, Google and IBM are growing at impressive rates and gaining market share, their gains are coming at the expense of smaller cloud providers and not AWS," Synergy found.

Overall, total cloud infrastructure equipment revenues — including public and private cloud, hardware and software — are poised to reach $70 billion in 2016 and continue to grow at a double-digit pace, according to a recent report from Synergy.