The World’s Top Cloud Vendors
The Cloud Wars ranking of the 10 most-influential cloud vendors in the world. We adjust the rankings regularly, so check back for fresh insights and updates.
February 24, 2020
While Salesforce will release its earnings on Feb. 25 and Workday on Feb. 27, the big news this week is Google Cloud’s jump from #6 on the Cloud Wars Top 10 up to #4. In yet another confirmation of why we chose Thomas Kurian as CEO of the Year for 2019, Google Cloud continues to:
- crank up massive momentum as the company triples the size of its sales team,
- tightens ties with global SIs and other key players in its partner ecosystem,
- win the support of hundreds of thousands of new developers,
- knock down the traditional boundaries of the cloud by introducing new AI-powered industry-specific solutions, and
- most important of all, continues to create the customer-first culture championed by Kurian.
On the quantifiable side, Google Cloud’s 53% revenue growth in 2019 over 2018 makes it the fastest-growing vendor in the Cloud Wars Top 10. You can argue that its 2019 revenue base of $8.92 billion is nowhere near as large of that of #1 Microsoft ($44.7 billion), #2 AWS($35 billion), or even #3 Salesforce (about $17.1 billion). But if Google Cloud can come close to that same growth rate this year, it’ll finish 2020 with more than $13 billion in revenue. That’s not too shabby for a company that just a year ago was #9 on the Cloud Wars Top 10, and still an unknown quantity in Kurian’s first days. But since then, Kurian and Google Cloud have certainly shown the power of the old adage about “what a difference a year makes.”
The Cloud Wars Top 10
1
Microsoft
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected): $44.7B
Cloud Services: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
CEO: Satya Nadella
Nadella & Co. show who’s #1: cloud revenue thumps AWS’s by 26%
Tech spending will double as % of GDP in next decade, Nadella says
2
Amazon
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected): $35.2B
Cloud Services: IaaS, PaaS
CEO: Andy Jassy
An influential survey of CIOs shows Azure is more popular than AWS
My ‘open letter’ to Jassy: don’t behave like predator but talk like pacifist
Top 3 tech battles in 2020 include Amazon vs. Oracle
3
Salesforce
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected): $16.3B
Cloud Services: SaaS, PaaS
Co-CEOs: Marc Benioff & Keith Block
20-Year Itch: can Benioff outflank SAP in redefining modern CRM?
Is Benioff planning to switch more databases from Oracle to AWS?
Savage competition: how Benioff plans to defeat Oracle and SAP
4
Google Cloud
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected): $9B
Cloud Services: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
CEO: Thomas Kurian
Up from #6: customer-first, grows 53%, new AI-powered solutions
To catch AWS, CEO Thomas Kurian must use M&A
Kurian tells MSFT and AMZN, ‘We are the fastest-growing cloud vendor’
5
SAP
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected): $7.7B
Cloud Services: SaaS, PaaS
Co-CEOs: Jen Morgan & Christian Klein
co-CEO Klein shoots down Ellison claim re Oracle nabbing big SAP customer
2 huge news items: betting future on Qualtrics, hedging on ECC 2025 cutoff
Can Morgan and Klein turn Experience Management into global standard?
6
Oracle
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected): $7.1B
Cloud Services: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS
CEO: Safra Catz
Larry Ellison brawling w/ SAP, Amazon and Salesforce
As Amazon pursues DB market, can Larry Ellison make Autonomous #1?
Oracle and SAP both claim #1 in enterprise apps—which will it be?
7
IBM
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected): $21B
Cloud Services: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS
CEO: Ginni Rometty
Ginni Rometty steps down as CEO as Q4 cloud revenue jumps 23% to $6.8B
5 steps new CEO Arvind Krishna can take to reinvigorate growth potential
Bank of America says cloud has saved billions in IT costs
8
Workday
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected): $3.5B
Cloud Services: SaaS, PaaS
CEO: Aneel Bhusri
Can Bhusri continue to beat SAP & Oracle for huge Fortune 100 deals?
Exclusive: Aneel Bhusri is Workday’s “Pied Piper of Machine Learning”
9
ServiceNow
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected): $3.4B
Cloud Services: SaaS
CEO: Bill McDermott
Huge Q4 as new CEO McDermott prepares to redefine SW industry
Can McDermott be king-maker in Salesforce-SAP battle for CRM?
McDermott’s moonshot: triple rev. to $10B, become ‘most admired’
10
TBD
2019 Cloud Revenue (projected):
Cloud Services:
CEO:
Who should become #10: Adobe, Alibaba, or Dell?
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