Synergy Research Group credited generative AI (genAI) for driving a 23 per cent year-on-year rise in enterprise outlay on cloud services in Q3, though noted the market was softer in 2023.

The research company stated enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services grew $15.7 billion to $84 billion worldwide.

It noted it was the fourth consecutive quarter of annual gains and stated genAI was a major factor in the growth.

Chief analyst John Dinsdale said the market grew by almost $16 billion over the past four quarters compared with $10 billion in the previous quartet.

“Given the already massive size of the market, we are seeing an impressive surge in growth.”

With most of the major cloud providers having released their earnings data for Q3, Amazon Web Services maintained its lead with a market share of 32 per cent, followed by Microsoft Azure (20 per cent) and Google Cloud (13 per cent.)

The research company stated the three posted strong growth rates over the past 12 months, “with particularly strong improvements at Amazon and Google”.

Among the tier-two cloud providers, Oracle, Huawei, Snowflake and Cloudflare posted the highest year-on-year growth rates.

Regionally, the US remained by far the largest cloud market and grew 23 per cent.

When measured in local currencies, the major countries with the strongest growth included India, Japan, Brazil and Italy.

In Europe the largest cloud markets are the UK and Germany, but the markets with the highest growth rates were the Republic of Ireland, Italy and Spain.