Alibaba made its foray into the cloud infrastructure market in 2015, with ambitions to become one of the biggest. Now, the company announced that it had quarterly revenue of $2.194 billion. That number shows it has surpassed IBM, which had about $1.65 billion in revenue.
$2 billion is a large figure, but to keep it in context, Amazon announced $11.6 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue for the most recent quarter. Azure came in second place with $5.9 billion. Google Cloud is still in third place, a position it has always held since cloud infrastructure became a thing.
Passing IBM was a surprise
Synergy Research shows that Google has 9% of the market share and about $2.9 billion in revenue in its most recent market share numbers. Alibaba is a bit behind Google, but it is now in fourth place, ahead of IBM. The company may not catch up with Google Cloud, led by Thomas Kurian, but it surpassed IBM, which means anything is possible.
In the previous quarter, Alibaba had 59% in growth, and this quarter had 60%. It is a slight increase, but it means the company is holding steady, reaching a certain plateau.
In the earnings call, Daniel Zhang, the CEO and Chairman at Alibaba Group said that the company is getting most of its growth by being China’s primary option.
The cloud is the future
The cloud is growing fast, and a look at the company’s revenue shows that its cloud division is experiencing swift growth. All the industries are in the process of adapting to the digital transformation spurred by the pandemic.
Most businesses will be done in the cloud, and the growth will continue in the near future. The company has a presence outside China, which could push it even more forward.
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