On the Jan. 27 earnings call, Satya Nadella casually mention that Microsoft’s security business did more than $10 billion in revenue in 2020.
Cloud Revenue
A deeper look into the numbers and marketplace dynamics shows that the $5.6 billion Google Cloud lost actually reflects a strong performance.
Amazon’s AWS cloud unit had an excellent year with revenue of $45.4B, but Microsoft blew past that w/ 2020 commercial cloud revenue of $59.5B.
Google Cloud Q4 growth happened far more rapidly than any other cloud provider, but that’s not because the others were slacking.
Extending its year-long run as the world’s fastest-growing major cloud vendor, Google Cloud Q4 revenue soared to $3.83 billion.
During the Microsoft fiscal Q2 earnings call, Satya Nadella and Amy Hood revealed how Microsoft has become the world’s #1 cloud provider.
Q4 financials from IBM show a cloud growth rate of 8%. In the competitive cloud industry, this means they are rapidly falling behind the leaders.
The cloud database market is being upended by a new breed of providers, led by Snowflake but there are many others.
The true indicator of the full potential of Snowflake is its 240% growth rate for contracted future commitments from customers.
For cloud vendors, the battle for supremacy in industry-specific clouds will be the most intense due to the massive future revenue potential.
Despite being the core of the greatest growth market the tech industry has ever known, cloud vendors face significant challenges.
Walmart, Accenture, UPS and GE all went live on Workday HCM in Q3, with those 4 companies representing almost 3 million new users.
The three vendors whose cloud revenue is growing most rapidly are Google at 44.8%, Oracle 33% (estimated), and Microsoft 31%.
If Google’s founders have a secret list of “best hires we’ve ever made,” I would bet Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian is near or at the top.
Surging growth and massive potential have spurred Alphabet to break out the financial results of Google Cloud in a separate reporting segment.
The surging and superior results from Amazon’s “traditional” businesses might provide Bezos with the impetus to spin out AWS next year.
Google Cloud retained its claim to being the fastest-growing cloud vendor by boosting its revenue 44.8% in Q3.
The stellar Q1 results posted by Microsoft show they are the biggest and most-influential enterprise-cloud vendor in the world.
I expect Microsoft to post excellent fiscal Q1cloud results and dispense with the notion that the sky above the cloud is falling.
In announcing Q2 growth and earnings last week, Workday execs did not specifically mention Oracle and SAP, but the subtext was clear.