The market caps for every Cloud Wars Top 10 vendor except Salesforce have risen — many significantly — over the past five weeks as demand for modern cloud technology remains strong across a wide range of vendors.
These numbers reinforce the belief among business leaders that the cloud has become not only the preferred architecture for the future of business but also an engine of innovation and growth for businesses across every industry, particularly in these troubled economic times.
The only exception to the rising market-cap trend among the Cloud Wars Top 10 is Salesforce, which saw its valuation decline over the past five weeks from $139.8 billion on Nov. 7 to $137.0 billion on Dec. 14. That drop continues the downward trend for troubled Salesforce, which had a valuation of $147.7 billion on Oct. 4.
As I noted in early November, the so-called “legacy” companies — SAP, Oracle, and IBM — continue to win increasing levels of confidence from the public because of their long-term customer relationships, their expertise in hybrid cloud, their deep industry knowledge, and their powerful partner ecosystems. For more on that, please see our Nov. 8 analysis headlined Legacy’s Revenge: Oracle, SAP, IBM Market Caps Rise as Cloud Natives Fall.
Here are the market cap comparisons for those three companies relative to five weeks ago:
| Company | Nov. 7 Market Cap | Dec. 14 Market Cap | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAP | $112.3 billion | $129.3 billion | +15.1% |
| IBM | $122.8 billion | $135.5 billion | +10.3% |
| Oracle | $204.9 billion | $222.6 billion | +8.6% |
Other notable changes:
- Workday was up a whopping 36.5% from $33.9 billion to $46.3 billion;
- Microsoft, which a month ago had dipped, this month rose about 18% from $1.65 trillion to $1.94 trillion;
- ServiceNow rose from $73.1 billion to $86.4 billion, up 18.2%; and
- Snowflake climbed from $42.3 billion to $49.3 billion, up 16.6%.
I’m also encouraged by the breadth of this upward trend because the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies represent every facet of the cloud industry: infrastructure, databases, cybersecurity, and both horizontal and industry-specific clouds.
As I always mention, I fully realize that market caps are fickle things and can certainly go down as well as up. But the significance here is that following Oracle’s blowout Q2 numbers earlier this week, plus recent strong results from Workday and Snowflake, customers and others are seeing that demand for these world-shaping cloud products and services remains very strong.
The only exception is troubled Salesforce, which recently reported a sharply lower growth rate for the quarter that ended Oct. 31 plus the stunning departures of co-CEO Bret Taylor and Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. But those factors clearly frame Salesforce as the distinct outlier in the Cloud Wars Top 10, a group whose constituents continue to demonstrate the ability to be the driving forces behind the acceleration economy.
