Global public cloud Q1 revenue cracks $126B

Operator and vendor revenues in the global public cloud market reached US$126 billion during the first quarter of 2022, a year-on-year increase of 26 per cent.

This is according to analyst firm Synergy Research Group, which claimed the biggest growth was seen in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS), with revenue from these services growing by 36 per cent to reach over US$44 billion.

“Public cloud-related markets are typically growing at rates ranging from 15 per cent to 40 per cent per year, with PaaS and IaaS leading the charge,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. 

“Looking out over the next five years the growth rates will inevitably tail off as these markets become ever-more massive, but we are still forecasting annual growth rates that are generally in the 10 per cent to 30 per cent range.

“To enable cloud service markets to keep up with demand by doubling in size in the next [three to four] years, the major cloud providers need an ever larger footprint of hyperscale data centres and more raw computing power, which then drives the markets for data centre hardware and software.

“For sure the competition will be tough, but up and down the cloud ecosystem there will be a bright future for companies that bring the right products to market in a timely fashion.”

Meanwhile, managed private cloud services, enterprise software-as-a-service and content delivery networks combined rose by an average of 21 per cent from last year, or US$54 billion.

As a result of the growth in these cloud services, public cloud providers spent US$28 billion on building, leasing and setting up data centre infrastructure during the quarter – a yearly increase of 20 per cent.

This follow's Synergy's March analysis, which found global spending on data centre infrastructure grew during 2021 by 10 per cent year-on-year to reach US$185 billion.

Synergy also claimed the most prominently features public cloud companies are currently Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce and Google, while Adobe, Alibaba, Cisco, Dell, Digital Realty, IBM, Inspur, Oracle, SAP and VMware were referred to as “other major players”.

All of these companies combined make up 60 per cent of all public cloud revenue, the analyst firm added.