Tomasz Tunguz Blog · 2023-02-03 · 1217d

Cloud Market Slowdown: 2023 Growth Projections Amid Cost Optimization Pressures

Tomasz Tunguz analyzes earnings reports from AWS, GCP, and Azure to predict cloud growth will decelerate to 18-22% in 2023, down from 44% a year prior. Major cloud providers are prioritizing profitability over growth as customers optimize costs, though long-term cloud adoption potential remains substantial with 90-95% of global IT spend still on-premises.

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Metrics in this report

AWS Annualized Revenue Run Rate

85$b

minimum

Based on Q4 performance

AWS Operating Margin

30%

rate

Profit margin comparison

AWS YoY Revenue Growth (Jan 2023)

mid-teens%

range

First month of 2023

Cloud Platform YoY Growth Rate (Current)

27%

average

AWS, GCP, Azure at time of analysis

Cloud Platform YoY Growth Rate (Historical)

44%

average

AWS, GCP, Azure one year prior

GCP Operating Loss

480$m

absolute

GCP profitability metric

GCP Operating Margin

-7%

rate

On $7.3B revenue

Global IT Spend On-Premises

90-95%

range

Total global IT infrastructure spend

Incremental Annual Cloud Spend (20% growth on $85B base)

17$b

calculated

New annual spend at projected growth rate

Projected Cloud Growth Rate (2023)

18-22%

range

Industry forecast