New Q1 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to dominate the cloud infrastructure services market with a 31% worldwide market share, dwarfing the chasing pack. The big three followers -- Microsoft, IBM and Google -- in aggregate accounted for 22% of the market, while the next 20 top-ranked cloud providers accounted for another 27%. The good news for Microsoft and Google is that they both achieved growth rates of well over 100% so they are at least slowly gaining some ground on the market leader. Outside of the big four, the next 20 cloud providers are growing at an average 41% per year, but in a market that is growing at over 50% that means that most of them are losing market share.

With most of the major operators having now released their earnings data for Q1, Synergy estimates that quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (including IaaS, PaaS and private & hybrid cloud) have now comfortably passed the $7 billion milestone. Growth rates remain somewhat similar across the major regions meaning that the United States continues to account for around half of the worldwide market.

"This is a market that is so big and is growing so rapidly that companies can be growing by 10-30% per year and might feel good about themselves and yet they'd still be losing market share," said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. "The big question for them is whether or not they are building a sustainable and profitable business. This can be done by focusing on specific regions or specific services, but the bulk of the market demands huge scale, a broad footprint, very deep pockets and a long-term corporate focus."