Amazon's sequential cloud growth slips, faces greater competition from Microsoft, IBM

While Amazon Web Services (AWS) (NASDAQ: AMZN) may be the top cloud provider, it appears that its grip on the market is slipping while rivals Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and IBM are driving new growth, according to Synergy Research Group.

During the second quarter, AWS' cloud revenues were flat sequentially and it saw its year-on-year growth rate drop to 49 percent due to tough competition. At the same time, Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) pace is slowing.

John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research, said that while AWS "remains a formidable leader of the market, Microsoft is making some huge strides in IaaS and PaaS while IBM now has clear leadership in the private & hybrid infrastructure services segment."

Despite the shifts of the key market players, the overall cloud services market continues to grow. Synergy said that quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (including IaaS, PaaS and private & hybrid cloud) have reached $3.7 billion, with trailing 12-month revenues comfortably exceeding $13 billion.

Amazon's AWS revenues are now exceeding $1 billion per quarter, with almost all of it coming from cloud infrastructure services. IBM and Microsoft reported cloud revenues of about $1 billion, but Synergy said "much of the cloud revenue comes from software/SaaS, cloud-related hardware products or associated professional and technical services."

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