Revenue from cloud services and infrastructure reaches $150 billion in first half of 2019

Operators and vendors in seven cloud service and infrastructure market segments raked in $150 billion from January to June.

A new report from Synergy Research Group found that companies focused on the cloud managed to bring in $150 billion in revenue through the first half of 2019. Cloud operators and vendors working in seven distinct service and infrastructure market segments managed to reach the milestone by June, representing a 24% increase from 2018.

Companies are increasingly moving away from hardware-heavy systems and toward cloud setups, with vendors seeing the biggest growth in demand for Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service. Cloud operators saw a 44% growth rate in both, followed by Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) at 27% 

"Cloud-associated markets are growing at rates ranging from 10% to well over 40% and annual spending on cloud will double in under four years," said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. "Cloud is increasingly dominating the IT landscape." 

Synergy Research Group's study found that spending on hardware and software for public, private and hybrid infrastructure grew at just over 10%.

SEE: Special report: The cloud v. data center decision (free PDF) (TechRepublic Premium)

Companies were also spending a lot of money on data center leasing and colocation services in order to handle and house the cloud infrastructure.

"In aggregate, spending on cloud services is now far greater than spending on supporting data center infrastructure," the report said.

"Infrastructure investments by cloud service providers helped them to generate over $90 billion in revenues from cloud infrastructure services (IaaS, PaaS, hosted private cloud services) and enterprise SaaS, in addition to which their infrastructure supports internet services such as search, social networking, email, e-commerce, gaming and mobile apps."

The companies reaping the most benefit from this increase in business include Microsoft, Amazon/AWS, Dell EMC, Cisco, HPE and Google, as well as Salesforce, Adobe, VMware, IBM, Digital Realty, Equinix and Rackspace. 

According to the study, these companies controlled half of the market, raking in $75 billion from their cloud services. Amazon, Microsoft and Google were the leaders in Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a service systems.

"Cloud has opened up a range of opportunities for new market entrants and for disruptive technologies and business models," Dinsdale added. 

"Amazon and Microsoft have led the charge in terms of driving changes and aggressively growing cloud revenue streams, but many other tech companies are also benefiting. The flip side is that some traditional IT players are having a hard time balancing protection of legacy businesses with the need to fully embrace cloud."

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