Report: Amazon and Microsoft reign supreme in European cloud market

Just as they are in the U.S., Amazon Web Services and Microsoft are the leading cloud providers across Europe based on cloud infrastructure revenues, according to first quarter research by Synergy Research Group (SRG.) Amazon is the top cloud provider in Europe and the leader in all of the major individual country markets while Microsoft is ranked second across the board. Below Amazon and Microsoft, SRG said the results varied across the countries.

Overall Google is the third-ranked cloud provider in Europe, but it trails both OVH and Orange, respectively, in France. IBM is ranked fourth overall, but has various top-six rankings in each individual country.  Salesforce, Rackspace and Oracle are global providers that are further down the country rankings, with Salesforce ranked fifth overall across all of Europe.

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“Similar to the U.S. and most of the APAC region, Amazon and Microsoft are the clear market leaders in Europe, both for the region as a whole and in each of the major European country markets,” said SRG's John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director, in a statement. “Behind the top two the battle is being played out between Google, IBM, other smaller global cloud providers and some major local telcos and IT service providers. There is no shortage of companies fighting for a share of the market, but across the region as a whole the top six cloud providers control three quarters of the market and their share has been increasing.

"Given the importance of scale, global presence and deep pockets, it will be difficult for any of the smaller cloud providers to change that picture.”

Telcos also have a large cloud presence across their home countries as they serve local markets where they have established customer relationships. Deutsche Telekom, Orange and KPN all rank fourth in their home countries. Among European telcos, Deutsche Telekom is the largest cloud provider thanks to a strong position in Germany and smaller operations across multiple countries, which helped it to place sixth overall across all of Europe, according to SRG.

European cloud infrastructure service revenues—which included infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and hosted private cloud services—were $6 billion in Q1, with trailing 12-month revenues reaching well over $21 billion. SRG said those services were currently growing at 38% per year.

The four largest country markets were the U.K., Germany, France and the Netherlands, which in aggregate account for 63% of the total.

Other countries in the top-10 mix included Italy, Spain, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium and Russia. While much smaller than the U.S. market, SRG said the European cloud revenues were growing at a faster rate.