Cloud computing has revolutionized the way modern businesses operate. Instead of maintaining expensive on-premises servers, companies can simply tap into virtually unlimited computing power available on demand. This scalability and flexibility has led to widespread enterprise adoption of public cloud solutions. In particular, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has emerged as the clear leader in this space. But just how pervasive is AWS among global businesses today? Let‘s examine some insightful usage and market share statistics to get the complete picture.
AWS in Numbers
The growth of AWS over the past decade has been simply staggering. From startup disruptors to Fortune 500s, AWS counts some of the biggest names across every industry among its customers. Here are some key facts and figures that highlight the dominance of AWS in the market today:
- 3.2 million+ active customers – Ranging from enterprises, government agencies to non-profits, the AWS customer base covers the full spectrum. [1]
- Netflix, Samsung, GE, Unilever – Over 90 of the Fortune 100 companies use AWS as their primary public cloud platform. [2]
- 81% SMBs – Small and midsize businesses under $50M in revenue account for a majority of the AWS user base. [3]
- 52% in US – American companies represent the highest percentage of AWS customers. Significant user bases exist in Australia, UK, India and Germany as well. [4]
- 5X more services – With over 200 specialized cloud services, AWS offers unmatched depth and variety in capabilities. [5]
Let‘s delve deeper into the customer mix, growth drivers and future outlook for AWS adoption among global enterprises.
Top Industries Using AWS
AWS is the preferred cloud platform across most verticals like retail, healthcare, finance, media and more. Here is a look at some of the top segments using AWS:
Banking and Financial Services
8 of the top 10 banks in North America are AWS customers. Key deployments include:
- Capital One migrated all applications from on-prem data centers to AWS cloud in 2015. This enabled faster product development and cost savings of 40% [$100 million]. [6]
- Fannie Mae shifted its mortgage loan processing system to AWS, leading to a 50% reduction in time to stand up environments. [7]
- Citibank uses AWS to analyze petabytes of customer data, improve predictive analytics and detect fraud faster. [8]
AWS offers highly secure and compliant infrastructure for workloads like core banking, capital markets and insurance. Financial customers praise the agility, resiliency and economy of scale achieved with AWS.
Media and Entertainment
Leading broadcasters and OTT platforms rely on AWS to deliver immersive content to global audiences. For example:
- BBC migrated its website and streaming services for 210 million global users to AWS. This resulted in 35-45% cost savings. [9]
- Netflix pioneered video streaming on AWS. Today, Netflix uses more than 100,000 AWS servers to reliably stream shows to 223 million subscribers worldwide. [10]
Key media capabilities offered by AWS include content production, direct ingest from cameras, machine learning for personalized recommendations and real-time analytics.
Healthcare Providers
AWS enables a patient-centric approach and accelerates research in healthcare:
- Philips Healthcare developed a cloud-based tele-ICU solution on AWS to help clinicians detect patient deterioration early. This has led to a 20% reduction in transfers to ICU. [11]
- Cerner migrated HealtheIntent platform to AWS to gain significant cost savings while scaling to meet client demands. [12]
- Fred Hutch uses AWS for its research platform, providing 1000+ scientists access to petabytes of genomic and proteomic data. [13]
AWS helps healthcare companies improve patient engagement, harness big data for research and clinical trials, and accelerate drug discovery.
This is just a sample of innovation across retail, automotive, logistics and other segments powered by the unmatched portfolio of capabilities available on AWS.
Company Size Distribution
AWS customers span the spectrum from lean startups to large global enterprises:
- Over 80% of AWS customers generate less than $1 million in annual revenue. 73% have less than 50 employees. [14]
- However, over 50% of Fortune 500 companies also use AWS for their cloud infrastructure needs. [15]
The distribution of companies using AWS by revenue and employee size is shown below:
Figure 1: AWS customer distribution by company revenue and size. [16]
The pay-as-you-go pricing of AWS allows smaller teams to get started quickly and grow smoothly as their requirements evolve. At the same time, the versatility, security and scalability of AWS also appeals to larger enterprises looking to migrate legacy workloads to the cloud.
Growth Drivers for AWS
What factors underlie the rising customer adoption and market share gains of AWS over competing platforms? Here are some of the key drivers:
Flexibility and Cost – The pay-as-you-go pricing of AWS, coupled with no upfront capital investment provides immense cost flexibility. Businesses save substantially by not having to overprovision local servers and can scale capacity seamlessly based on demand.
Innovation Pace – AWS releases thousands of new features and services every year – far outpacing other cloud providers. This gives customers access to cutting-edge capabilities around analytics, blockchain, quantum computing and more.
Ecosystem – The AWS partner network provides access to pre-built solutions, consulting/migration services and 75+ vertical-specific capabilities. This rich ecosystem makes it easy for customers to build on AWS.
Compliance – AWS has the most comprehensive compliance coverage with over 90 certifications for sectors like healthcare, finance and government. This helps addresses key regulatory and security concerns when moving to the cloud.
The Road Ahead
As per Gartner, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud is forecast to grow 21% in 2023 to $494 billion. [17] AWS is strongly positioned to continue expanding its market leadership in the years ahead due to several factors:
- New product introductions like AWS Amplify, Outposts, RoboMaker keep adding cutting-edge capabilities on AWS.
- More mission-critical workloads are expected to shift from private data centers to AWS cloud, especially with 5G and IoT proliferation.
- Increased penetration in emerging economies across Asia, Middle East and Latin America will drive growth.
- Investments in healthcare, life sciences, automotive and public sector open new expansion opportunities.
The journey to cloud is only accelerating. AWS, with its unmatched track record of customer success, breadth of services and rapid pace of innovation, is clearly the leading choice for global enterprises today and in the future.
Summary
I hope this guide provided you a comprehensive picture of AWS adoption – spanning company sizes, industries, geographies and future outlook. AWS has cemented its position as the #1 public cloud platform based on market share, revenue and customer deployments. Its versatile on-demand infrastructure, cost benefits and wide range of specialized services make AWS the preferred choice for startups and large enterprises alike across every industry vertical.
