Microsoft is achieving the highest margins while at the same time achieving the strongest growth in the UK cloud market, according to a working paper from the competition watchdog.updating stakeholders on progress shows how the UK markets are severely consolidated around two dominant players . The market as a whole has more than doubled in three years; UK IaaS and PaaS revenues went from between £2.5 and £3 billion in 2019 to between £7 billion and £7.
In IaaS, AWS saw its share fall slightly to between 40 and 50 percent in 2022 while Microsoft saw its share rise from to 30 and 40 percent. Despite AWS leading the market, Microsoft was achieving the strongest growth both in terms of revenue and new business winsm, the CMA found. As it dominated growth and new customer wins, Microsoft also achieved the highest margins in the UK cloud market, according to the CMA.
The CMA noted that its profitability assessment does not necessarily mean the market could be more competitive."Such findings are not in themselves causes of competitive harm," it said. While the CMA found software licensing practices did not influence the choice of public cloud provider in isolation, Microsoft enterprise agreements might exert a more subtle influence.