(c)iStock.com/fazon1

A note released by Synergy Research shows the public cloud continues to make significant inroads into the overall IT market, generating over $20 billion (£12.9bn) in quarterly revenues for IT firms.

According to the research, public cloud operators provide $10bn in quarterly revenues for key technology and IT supplies, while generating $12bn themselves in revenues from infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS).

Synergy classifies the leading vendors into two main categories. On the supply side, the leaders are HP, Cisco, Dell, IBM and Equinix, while for cloud services the market leaders are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Salesforce, Google and IBM. These separate categories have been tracked by the research firm for several years. In February, AWS hit a five years high in cloud infrastructure market share brushing off the increasing competition from Microsoft, while earlier this month it was reported that HP had finally overtaken Cisco in cloud infrastructure equipment.

Digging down into the revenue generators, hardware and software used to build cloud infrastructure contributes $7bn of spend, at a 26% year on year growth, while colocation and data centre lease contributes $2.8bn at 9% growth. SaaS contributes $6.6bn output, compared to cloud infrastructure services – IaaS, PaaS, public and hybrid – at $5.5bn.

Synergy argues the public cloud market is characterised by big numbers, high growth rates – and a collection of large vendors at the top.

“While there is still a place for small to medium sized public cloud players, especially on the service side within a specific region, the public cloud really is dominated by hyperscale cloud operators that can afford to build huge data centre footprints that span multiple continents,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director.