As Oracle, Google Cloud, and ServiceNow outpace competitors as the Cloud Wars Top 10 fastest-growing companies as of the end of September, my weekly ranking of the world’s hottest cloud vendors appears to be splitting into four distinct groups.
While you can see growth rates for the entire Cloud Wars Top 10 in the graphic below, here are the four sub-categories that I believe are emerging.
Group 1: The One and Only Microsoft
Microsoft is #1 on the Cloud Wars Top 10 list overall, but #4 on this newest Cloud Wars Growth Chart. Its cloud-revenue growth rate of 21% falls right in the middle of the Cloud Wars Top 10 spectrum bounded by #1 Oracle’s 30% and #10 AWS‘s 11%, I believe the Microsoft Cloud deserves its own rarified-air category because of its astonishing mass, which in its most-recent quarter translated into $30.3 billion.
No other cloud vendor is anywhere close to Microsoft in terms of total cloud revenue — it is, by any objective measurement, a blowout. Look at it this way: By volume, the second-largest vendor on the Cloud Wars Top 10 is AWS, and its most-recent quarterly revenue was $22.1 billion. That means Microsoft Cloud is 37% larger in terms of revenue than AWS ($22.1B X 1.37 = $30.28B).
Yes, AWS probably remains the market leader in the category of cloud infrastructure, but if you look at the total enterprise-cloud market, Microsoft Cloud stands alone with no other cloud vendor even in the same zip code.
Group 2: The Overachievers
These pace-setters each generated cloud-revenue growth of 25% to 30% in their most-recent quarters:
#1 Oracle: cloud revenue jumped 30% to $4.6 billion for the quarter ended Aug. 31;
#2 Google Cloud: revenue up 28% to $8.03 billion for the quarter ended June 30;
#3 ServiceNow: subscription revenue rose 25% to $2.1 billion for the quarter ended June 30; and
Snowflake: product revenue jumped 37% to $640 million for the quarter ended July 31. (In keeping with our long-held policy for these periodic “Cloud Wars Growth Charts,” Snowflake is plotted at the bottom because its revenue is so much smaller than those of the other nine vendors. When Snowflake quarterly revenue reaches $1 billion, I’ll plug them into the mainstream rankings on these reports.)
Group 3: Strong and Steady
In this cluster, we find archrivals SAP and Workday, two world-class enterprise-apps vendors that come to the Cloud Wars from very different pedigrees: While SAP committed to a cloud-first approach only after 50 years of on-premise focus, Workday has been not only cloud-first but also cloud-only since its founding in 2005. While SAP’s cloud business is more than 2X as large as Workday’s, both companies turned in very similar growth performances in their most-recent quarters:
#5 SAP posted cloud revenue of $3.65 billion, up 19%, for the quarter ended June 30; and
#6 Workday subscription revenue rose 18.8% to $1.62 billion for the quarter ended July 31.
Group 4: The Plodders, Struggling with Law of Big Numbers
While we’re got to tip our hats to AWS ($22.1 billion) and Salesforce ($8.6 billion) for their latest quarterly revenues, it is clear that gravity, vicious competition, and new market dynamics have brought these former high-flyers back down to Earth.
#7 AWS grew just 12% to reach $22.1 billion for the quarter ended June 30, just 18 months after growing 37%; and
#8 Salesforce saw its revenue grow 11% to $8.6 billion for the quarter ended July 31.
#9 IBM no longer breaks out cloud revenue.
CLOUD WARS GROWTH CHART AS OF SEPT. 25, 2023
| COMPANY | GRTH RATE | REVENUE | QRTR ENDED |
| #1 Oracle | 30% | $4.6B | Aug. 31 |
| #2 Google Cloud | 28% | $8.03B | June 30 |
| #3 ServiceNow | 25% | $2.03B (subscr.) | June 30 |
| #4 Microsoft | 21% | $30.3B | June 30 |
| #5 SAP | 19% | $3.65B | June 30 |
| #6 Workday | 18.8% | $1.63B (subscr.) | July 31 |
| #7 Amazon | 12% | $22.1B | June 30 |
| #8 Salesforce | 11% | $8.6B | July 31 |
| #9 IBM | ?? | ?? | June 30 |
| *#10* Snowflake | 37% | $640M (product) | July 31 |
Gain insight into the way Bob Evans builds and updates the Cloud Wars Top 10 ranking, as well as how C-suite executives use the list to inform strategic cloud purchase decisions. That’s available exclusively through the Acceleration Economy Cloud Wars Top 10 Course.
