AWS Leapfrogs Traditional Vendors to Become #1 in Enterprise Storage

In 2018, IT Brand Pulse observed that no one published estimates of how much revenue the cloud service providers derive from storage, and where that places them in the rankings of storage leaders. This inspired us to publish a LinkedIn article connecting various sources of data to conclude AWS was the #3 enterprise storage vendor in 2017, and on a trajectory to become #1 by 2020.

The following is our updated estimates for AWS’s ranking on the enterprise storage leaderboard in 2020. The bottom line is research shows that our prediction came true and AWS became the #1 enterprise storage vendor by revenue.

Read on to see how we calculated our results.

AWS Growth Zooms Past Sluggish Traditional Storage Leaders

Below is a ranking of Enterprise External OME Storage Systems that IDC publishes quarterly. These are the storage systems you find every day in data centers and are being displaced a little every year by Storage-as-as-Service (STaaS). Aside from a few quarters where the traditional storage leaders enjoyed spurts of year-over-year growth, their trajectory has been flat to down.

Enterprise Storage Leaderboard – Q3 2020

Cloud System Infrastructure Services (IaaS) Revenue is Booming

We then searched for data about cloud services revenue. Fortunately, market leading cloud service provider AWS publishes their revenue quarterly.

IT Brand Pulse estimates that 15% to 20% of overall Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) revenue reported by AWS is Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) revenue. Below are the AWS revenue numbers for Q3 2020 published by Amazon. It shows that AWS STaaS revenue in Q3 2020, at 15% and 20% of overall revenue, is between $1.74B – $2.32B.

AWS STaaS Revenue Estimated $1.74B – $2.32B in Q3 2020

Microsoft the #2 IaaS and STaaS Vendor

In October 2020, Synergy Research published worldwide cloud provider market share for Q3 2020, which we will use to extrapolate STaaS market share. Combined, Amazon and Microsoft make up over half of the market at 33% and 18% respectively. According to Synergy, “Amazon market share remains at its long-standing mark of around 33%, while Microsoft’s share was over 18%.”

Based on our estimates that STaaS revenue is 15% to 20% of overall IaaS revenue, and Synergy’s estimate that Microsoft revenue is 54.5% of AWS revenue, Microsoft STaaS revenue in Q3 2020 is then between $940M – $1.26B in Q3 2020.

AWS Takes #1 in Market Share, Azure Closing in on #2 Spot

Below we inserted the estimated AWS and Microsoft Q3 storage revenue into the IDC storage rankings to show that AWS is now #1 in enterprise storage revenue. Azure has risen to the #3 spot, and with revenue growth at 59%, we expect as soon as Q4 2020 Microsoft will overtake Dell Technologies for the #2 spot.

Enterprise Server, Storage, and Networking Leadership will be Dominated by Cloud Service Providers

In this article, we only compared estimates for AWS and Microsoft STaaS revenue. If we added estimates for Google, Alibaba, and other major cloud service providers, more would appear on the leaderboard. And most likely, cloud service providers are the enterprise server and networking leaders.

Let me know if you would like to see those estimates from IT Brand Pulse.