New Q4 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Amazon (AWS) maintains its dominant leadership of the IaaS/PaaS market, despite Microsoft, Google and IBM all exceeding its growth rate in the quarter. The three global IT giants are all making a major push in cloud infrastructure services, with Microsoft and IBM almost doubling their IaaS/PaaS revenues over the fourth quarter of 2012. But in a total market that grew by 52%, Amazon grew by 65% and increased its worldwide market share to over 30%.

With most of the major operators having now released their earnings data for Q4, Synergy estimates that IaaS/PaaS quarterly revenue reached the $3 billion milestone, with full-year 2013 revenues falling just short of $10 billion. Total AWS revenues exceeded $1 billion in the final quarter and were well over $3 billion for the full year, with the great majority of that resulting from its IaaS and PaaS offerings. IBM and Microsoft can also point to impressively large cloud revenues, but much of those revenues come from software, private cloud services, cloud-related hardware products and associated professional and technical services.

"The big three global IT vendors are putting the pedal to the metal on cloud infrastructure services and are rapidly expanding their service footprints and revenues," said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. "However, while they are gaining market share it is not at the expense of Amazon. It is doing a very impressive job of maintaining its leadership in this strategically important high-growth market."