Source: TechRadar | Original Canalys research report, 2020
Global Cloud Infrastructure Spending Hits $107 Billion in 2019
Organizations worldwide spent a record $107 billion on cloud computing infrastructure services in 2019, according to a report from analyst firm Canalys. That figure represents a 37% increase compared to 2018, underscoring how rapidly enterprises across every sector were accelerating their move to the cloud.
The growth was driven not just by technology companies, but by businesses across financial services, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing—industries increasingly positioning themselves as technology providers in their own right. Organizations adopted a mix of multi-cloud and hybrid IT strategies, selecting cloud providers based on the specific compute requirements of individual workloads.
Market Share Breakdown: AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
Amazon Web Services (AWS) retained its dominant position, but Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud both posted impressive growth rates that outpaced the market leader.
| Provider | 2018 Spend | 2019 Spend | 2018 Market Share | 2019 Market Share | Annual Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | $25.4bn | $34.6bn | 32.7% | 34.6% | 36% |
| Microsoft Azure | $11.0bn | $18.1bn | 14.2% | 16.9% | 63.9% |
| Google Cloud | $3.3bn | $6.2bn | N/A | N/A | 87.8% |
AWS: Still the Clear Market Leader
AWS grew its revenue from $25.4bn in 2018 to $34.6bn in 2019, a 36% increase. Its market share edged up slightly from 32.7% to 34.6%, consolidating its position at the top of the cloud infrastructure market. Roughly one-third of all global cloud infrastructure spending went to Amazon’s cloud division.
Microsoft Azure: Fast-Growing Challenger
Microsoft Azure jumped from $11bn to $18.1bn in customer spending—a 63.9% annual growth rate—and increased its market share from 14.2% to 16.9%. Azure’s rapid expansion was fueled by deep enterprise integrations and Microsoft’s broader push into hybrid cloud with products such as Azure Arc, which allows Azure management capabilities to run on other clouds including AWS and Google Cloud.
Google Cloud: Highest Growth Rate of the Big Three
Google Cloud surpassed Alibaba Cloud and other providers to claim the third spot. Customers spent $6.2bn on Google Cloud in 2019, nearly double the $3.3bn recorded in 2018—an 87.8% annual growth rate, the highest among the three major hyperscalers. This period also marked the first time Alphabet (Google’s parent company) broke out Google Cloud revenues as a separate line item in its financial reporting.
Why Spending Was Accelerating: Key Drivers
Canalys chief analyst Alastair Edwards attributed the surge to a structural shift in how non-technology businesses think about themselves:
“Organizations across all industries, from financial services to healthcare, are transitioning to being technology providers. Many are using a combination of multi-clouds and hybrid IT models, recognizing the strengths of each cloud service provider and the different compute operating environments needed for specific types of workloads.”
Alastair Edwards, Chief Analyst, Canalys
The increasing adoption of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) models—alongside greater investment in cloud-based compute, storage, and managed services—signaled that enterprises were moving beyond lift-and-shift migrations and investing in cloud-native architectures.
The Growing Role of Channel Partners
Edwards also highlighted how channel partners—resellers, managed service providers (MSPs), and system integrators—would become increasingly critical as cloud adoption matured:
“The role of channel partners will become more important, as cloud use increases, in terms of defining application strategies, integration into business processes, optimizing user experiences, governance and compliance, as well as securing data and workloads.”
Alastair Edwards, Chief Analyst, Canalys
This reflects a broader industry dynamic: as cloud environments grow more complex—spanning multiple providers and hybrid on-premises setups—organizations increasingly rely on specialist partners to manage integration, security, and compliance rather than handling these responsibilities entirely in-house.
Outlook: $284 Billion by 2024
Canalys analysts projected at the time that global cloud infrastructure spending would reach $284 billion by 2024, assuming continued digital transformation across industries and sustained multi-cloud adoption. The compound growth implied by that forecast suggested the market would roughly triple in size within five years from the 2019 baseline.
For DevOps and platform engineering teams, the practical takeaway was clear: cloud infrastructure was no longer a cost to be minimized but a strategic investment. Architects selecting between AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud had a growing body of competing services, pricing models, and regional footprints to evaluate—and increasingly, the answer was not one provider, but several.
Key Takeaways
- Global cloud infrastructure spending reached $107bn in 2019, up 37% year-over-year (Canalys).
- AWS held approximately one-third of the market at $34.6bn, growing 36%.
- Microsoft Azure grew 63.9% to $18.1bn, capturing 16.9% market share.
- Google Cloud posted the fastest growth (87.8%), nearly doubling revenue to $6.2bn.
- Multi-cloud and hybrid IT strategies were the dominant adoption pattern among large enterprises.
- Channel partners were expected to play an increasingly important role in governance, integration, and security.
- Canalys forecast total cloud infrastructure spend would reach $284bn by 2024.