When you consider the extent of the cloud’s influence in our daily lives over the last decade, it’s difficult to imagine what the world would look like without it. The rise of cloud-native technologies has given way to IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS platforms, which are intrinsic to today’s IT.
Among the top cloud computing companies of 2020, four remain clear standouts: Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and Google. These cloud providers have maintained their positions while optimizing their strategies and market approach while keeping the global pandemic in mind.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented move to remote work and video conferencing accelerated digital transformation and the move to the cloud.
For Microsoft — the largest enterprise cloud vendor in the world — this meant a surge in the use of collaboration tools like Teams. The company announced cloud revenue of $51 billion for the last 12 months ending June 30. Then there's Azure, their cloud service provider, which directly competes with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
"We have seen two years' worth of digital transformation in two months,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “From remote teamwork and to sales and customer service to critical cloud infrastructure and security, we are working alongside customers every day to help them stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”
Meanwhile, Amazon was an early leader in public cloud computing with AWS and has since become a major player in AI, database, machine learning, and serverless deployments. Since launching in 2008, AWS has expanded well beyond cloud computing and storage.
Recent developments for AWS include the launch of AppFlow to design SaaS workflows, Keyspaces, and the general availability of the company's Windows migration service and savings plans.
The next biggest player in the cloud revolution is SaaS giant Salesforce. The company, which just posted its first $5 billion quarter, is set to become the first cloud-applications vendor to hit that milestone. By providing customers highly personalized experiences, the company has put its Salesforce Customer 360 effort in the center of the cloud sector.
Salesforce’s current cloud offerings include integration, commerce, analytics, marketing, service platform, and sales. Service and sales clouds are the most mature, but the rest are growing quickly. Salesforce's Einstein provides an AI functionality that's an upsell to its clouds. In the end, Salesforce sees a $168 billion total addressable market.
The fourth-biggest player in the cloud arena is none other than Google. In Q2, Google Cloud reported $3 billion in revenue, making it the fastest-growing of the four leading cloud companies.
