Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the leading cloud service provider in Q4 2020, accounting for 31 per cent of total spend, as the global Cloud infrastructure market spending increased 32 per cent to reach $39.9 billion in the quarter, according to a new report.

Total global expenditure was over $3 billion higher than the last quarter and nearly $10 billion more than Q4 2019, according to data provided by global research firm Canalys.

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Microsoft’s Azure growth rate accelerated once again, up by 50 per cent to boost its market share in the global cloud services market to 20 per cent at second spot.

Google Cloud was the third largest cloud service provider in Q4 2020, with a 7 per cent share. It reported growth of 58 per cent in Q4 2020.

Demand for cloud services stayed strong across all enterprise customer segments, including industries most affected by the pandemic, such as retail and manufacturing.

“The rate of digitalisation, led by cloud, is gathering pace. Companies are now more confident about releasing budgets for business transformation,” said Research Analyst Blake Murray.

“Large projects that were postponed earlier in the year are being re-prioritised, led by application modernisation, SAP migrations and workplace transformation,” he added.

For full-year 2020, total cloud infrastructure services spending grew 33 per cent to $142 billion, up from $107 billion in 2019.

The small and medium-sized businesses continue to turn to cloud services to help them maintain their operations and control costs.

“As organisations start to consider moving more mission-critical workloads to the cloud, they will look to partners to define the right cloud platforms and strategies, as well as solve the most pressing issues around cost management, security, sovereignty and hybrid IT integration,” explained Chief Analyst Alastair Edwards.

Microsoft holds the largest share of the indirect channel with Azure, though AWS and Google Cloud are gaining ground.

Meanwhile, as customers deploy different workloads across public, private and edge cloud infrastructures, they are looking for independent partners with capabilities across multiple cloud providers, the report mentioned.