Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily news and commentary show, hosted by Cloud Wars Founder Bob Evans. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the Cloud.
This episode is sponsored by Acceleration Economy’s “Cloud Wars Top 10 Course,” which explains how Bob Evans builds and updates the Cloud Wars Top 10 ranking, as well as how C-suite executives use the list to inform strategic cloud purchase decisions. The course is available today.
This Cloud Wars Minute provides an update on the Cloud Wars rankings now that most vendors have reported their Q2 numbers.
Highlights
00:11 — The Q2 growth numbers are in, and for the top vendors by growth rate, it’s number one, Oracle; number two, Google Cloud; number three, ServiceNow, and number four, Microsoft. Some CEOs have been saying that, after several quarters of really clamping down due to economic uncertainty, customers are starting to open up more. They want to get ready for the generative artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.
01:44 —To give some context around the revenue size, Oracle is the fastest growing at 54%.
Its revenue for the quarter ended May 31 was $4.4 billion. Google Cloud is next at 28%, with revenue of $8 billion. ServiceNow grew 25%, $2.1 billion in revenue for the quarter. Microsoft is growing at 21% and revenue for their Q4, ended June 30th, of $30.3 billion. Number five was Workday with 20% growth in subscription revenue. Workday’s fiscal Q2 numbers will be out in a couple of weeks.
02:40 — Number six was SAP at 19%. But it held steady on its constant currency growth rate from Q1 to Q2, so it is leveling off. Number seven, AWS with a 12% growth rate. I think it has to be a concern. Number eight, Salesforce reported 11% growth for the quarter ended April 30. It, too, will have Q2 numbers coming out in a couple of weeks.
03:27 — IBM is a question mark. It’s said very little in its very richly detailed financial reports. I haven’t been able to find anything talking about its cloud revenue for the quarter and certainly not its growth rate.
03:53 — Number ten, Snowflake, with a 50% growth revenue of $590 million for the quarter ended April 30. Snowflake is isolated over here at number ten even with a 50% growth rate because its revenue is relatively so much smaller than the other companies.
04:37 — The trend of companies trying to do everything they can to push their cloud spending down seems to be turning a little bit. I also think there is something going on here with AWS. I want to keep a close eye on them over the next quarter.
