With business leaders boosting tech spending to capitalize on the GenAI revolution, Google Cloud’s 25.7% Q4 growth rate has pushed it into the #1 spot among the world’s fastest-growing major cloud and AI vendors as Google Cloud squeaked past incumbent ServiceNow, which grew at 25.5%.
Google Cloud will hold this #1 spot at least until the end of this month when the next version of the Cloud Wars Growth Chart comes out after Workday, Salesforce, and Snowflake release their fiscal-Q4 numbers for the period ending Jan. 31. Until then, here’s the lineup:
| Company | Cloud Growth | Cloud Revenue |
| 1. Google Cloud | 25.7% | $9.2 billion |
| 2. ServiceNow | 25.5% | $2.37 billion |
| 3. (tie) Oracle | 25% | $4.8 billion |
| 3. (tie) SAP | 25% | $4.1 billion |
| 5. Microsoft | 24% | $33.7 billion |
| 6. Workday | 18.1% | $1.69 billion |
| 7. AWS | 13.2% | $24.2 billion |
| 8. Salesforce | 11% | $8.72 billion |
| 9. IBM (Hybrid Platform & Solutions) | 1% | $5.3 billion |
| * * * * * * * * * * | *** | **** |
| 10. Snowflake — (As noted in the past, I am isolating Snowflake on the Cloud Wars Growth Chart until its quarterly revenue reaches $1 billion) | 34% | $699 million |
So a few thoughts on this snapshot of how the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies performed in late 2023 in this, the greatest growth market the world has ever known.
- This is by far the tightest battle for the #1 spot on the Cloud Wars Growth Chart that I can recall.
- It’s also the first time that multiple companies have been clustered so tightly near the top — in this case, four vendors within a span of 1.7 percentage points.
- I find it fascinating that of those top five, two are born in the cloud (Google Cloud and ServiceNow) while three are “legacy” companies that have done superb jobs at pivoting to the cloud while also maintaining large on-premises businesses that help to run vast swaths of the global economy.
- Among the many excellent performances captured on this list, I have to call out these for particular notice: Google Cloud for reaching the #1 spot and accelerating its growth from Q3’s 22% to Q4’s 25.7%; ServiceNow for having vaulted to the top and also for maintaining a lusty 25.5% growth rate; SAP for cranking up the growth from 22% to 25%; and, isolated down at the bottom, Snowflake for continuing to shake up the world of data clouds with a very healthy growth rate of 34%.
- But I really have to call out Microsoft for managing to deliver 24% growth to $33.7 billion on the year-earlier’s $27.1 billion. Is there any other company in the world of that scale growing anywhere close to 24%?
Final Thought
One of the things I love about the Cloud Wars is that over the past six quarters, many of the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies have temporarily captured the top spot on our Growth Chart: SAP was #1 for a couple of quarters, then Oracle vaulted into hypergrowth with its Cerner acquisition, then ServiceNow grabbed the top spot as its AI momentum kicked in, and now Google Cloud is #1.
All of that ferocious competition has created a phenomenal buyer’s market for business leaders who are benefitting in big ways from the high-impact innovation that’s the fruit of all that unfettered competition.
So while Google Cloud currently holds the coveted spot as the world’s hottest major cloud and AI vendor, the ultimate and big-time winners in the Cloud Wars are the customers — and that’ll be the case regardless of which company sits atop the Cloud Wars Growth Chart.
But for now, well done, Google Cloud!
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