Technology

Amazon Proves Dominance of Cloud Business, Again

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: April 26, 2019 6:20 am

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 9:32 pm

Many of the world’s largest tech companies have rushed into the cloud computing business as more and more governments and corporations move to store their data and applications with outside vendors. The cloud computing business has become the primary chance for growth, on the top and bottom line, for the firms competing in the segment. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has been at the top of the market share list since the cloud became big business. Its new earnings show that is still the case. And, its massive cloud business is still growing.

Amazon posted total revenue of $59.7 billion for the quarter that ended March 31, compared to $51 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Net income was $3.6 billion, up from $1.6 billion.

In its cloud business, known as Amazon Web Services, revenue rose to $7.7 billion from $5.4 billion. Operating income was $2.2 billion up from $1.4 billion. AWS, based on its current growth rate, is on a path to post revenue of well over $25 billion, and perhaps higher.

Amazon pointed to the division’s expansion progress:

AWS continued to expand its infrastructure to best serve customers, launching the AWS Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) Region, and announcing plans for the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region. AWS now provides 64 Availability Zones across 21 infrastructure regions globally, with announced plans for another 12 Availability Zones and four regions in Bahrain, Indonesia, Italy, and South Africa.

And new efficiency in its systems:

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon EFS Infrequent Access (IA), a new storage class for Amazon EFS that is designed for files accessed less frequently, enabling customers to reduce storage costs by up to 85% compared to the Amazon EFS Standard storage class. With EFS IA, Amazon EFS customers simply enable Lifecycle Management, and any file not accessed after 30 days gets automatically moved to the EFS IA storage class.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said AWS eventually would be bigger than the company’s e-commerce services. At the current rate, he could be right in three to five years.