Up 19.1 per cent year-on-year.

Global public cloud services revenue for the first half of 2023 reached US$315.5 billion, an increase of 19.1 per cent over the same period in 2022.

According to research firm IDC, software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications made up 45 per cent of all revenue in the period. 

On a category basis, next was infrastructure-as-a-service at 20.4 per cent, followed by platform-as-a-service at 18 per cent and SaaS system infrastructure software (SIS) at 16.9 per cent.

Microsoft maintained its position as the vendor with the strongest market share, the research firm claimed, at 17.1 per cent, followed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) with 12.6 per cent.

Taking the top five public cloud services providers - Microsoft, AWS, Salesforce, Google and Oracle - the companies’ combined revenue comprised 41 per cent of the global total, which was "relatively unchanged year-over-year," according to the firm.

“The fundamentals of cloud technologies and public cloud PaaS providers as strategic partners to enterprises and companies of all sizes are evident as AI pervasiveness strengthens,” said Lara Greden, research director for PaaS at IDC.

“Companies continue to accelerate movement to and adoption of the cloud for modernisation and new, intelligent application initiatives based on all types of data streams. The strong market growth seen in PaaS comes from not just the top few but a large ecosystem of PaaS vendors that are meeting customer needs in the cloud.”

More than 12 months ago, competing research firm Gartner claimed in November that end-user public cloud services spending would reach US$591.8 billion by the end of 2023, translating to growth of 20.7 per cent year-on-year.