Microsoft Thumps Amazon by 31% in Q2 Cloud Revenue; Bigger than AWS + Google Cloud

Blowing away any question about who rules the cloud, Microsoft posted cloud revenue for the quarter ended June 30 of $19.5 billion, which is more than the combined total of cloud revenue from Amazon and Google for the same period.

On my weekly Cloud Wars Top 10 rankings, Microsoft is the longtime #1, Amazon is the longtime #2, and Google Cloud earlier this year climbed to #3.

While Microsoft’s streak of having more cloud revenue than the combined total of its two top rivals will probably be broken in calendar Q3, the accomplishment is extraordinary and deserves to be highlighted, particularly because so many people still have the misguided impression that Amazon rather than Microsoft is king of the cloud.

Now, before showing the numbers and doing the math, the biggest story is that all 3 companies delivered outstanding results in the quarter ended June 30, which for Microsoft is its fiscal Q4. Without question, demand for cloud services, solutions and capabilities are surging as the world’s 3 largest and most-influential cloud providers experienced huge demand across their entire portfolios as customers strive to become end-to-end digital businesses.

Here’s how the cloud-revenue numbers work out for calendar Q2:

• Microsoft $19.5 billion, up 36%
• AWS $14.81 billion, up 37%
• Google Cloud $4.63 billion, up 54%
• AWS + Google Cloud = $19.44 billion

So, blockbuster performances across the board, reflecting the broad and deep march to the cloud for businesses of every size and in every industry and in every region of the world. A few thoughts on those stunning figures:

• Last quarter was the first time in a LONG time that AWS’s growth rate topped that for Microsoft cloud
• Annualized cloud-revenue run rates: Microsoft $78 billion, AWS $59 billion, Google Cloud $18.5 billion
• Cloud revenue as percentage of total corporate revenue: Microsoft 42.2%; Amazon 12%; Google 7.5%
• On a sequential basis, all 3 companies saw cloud-revenue growth increase from Q1 to Q2: Google Cloud from 46% to 54%; AWS from 32% to 37%; and Microsoft Cloud from 33% to 36%.

Every quarter, we see various reports yapping about how Amazon dominates over Microsoft and Google in the cloud. And if the topic is limited exclusively to cloud infrastructure, that’s true—AWS is the IaaS category creator and king and there’s no doubt about that. 

But when you take the view that business customers take—how can the various parts of the cloud help me move faster, grow faster, and dazzle my customers?—then all aspects of the cloud are included, and Microsoft emerges as the unmistakable leader.

Think about it: two of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced companies on Earth—Amazon and Google—had cloud businesses that last quarter grew 37% and 54%. And still the combined cloud revenue for both of those great companies did not match that of Microsoft.

And that encapsulates why Microsoft unquestionably rules the cloud, why it has done so for the past 2-1/2 years and why it has been #1 on the Cloud Wars Top 10 for all of that time.

Disclosure: at the time of this writing, Google Cloud was among the many clients of Cloud Wars Media LLC and/or Evans Strategic Communications LLC.

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