The current boom in the earnings of IT giants, a phenomenon driven by the robust performance of their cloud computing divisions, signals a fundamental and irreversible shift in the global technology landscape.
The recent fantastic growth reported by leaders like Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud Platform) is not just a quarterly success story; it is the crest of a massive, multi-trillion-dollar wave known as the global cloud business.
Demystifying the cloud
The term “cloud business” is often perceived as complex jargon, but at its heart, it is a straightforward concept: renting computing power, storage, and software over the internet.
Imagine building a massive house (a digital application). Traditionally, one would have to buy the land (servers), build the house (data centers), purchase all the plumbing and electrical systems (networking hardware), and hire a maintenance crew (IT staff). This is expensive, time-consuming, and inflexible.
Cloud computing providers, or Hyperscalers (like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud), change this entirely. They build enormous, hyper-efficient data centers across the globe and let businesses rent what they need, when they need it, on a pay-as-per-use basis.
This rental model is typically broken down into three main service layers, which form the core of the cloud business:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This is like renting the land and the basic structure of the house (servers, storage, and networking). One manages what one puts inside (operating systems, applications). Example: AWS EC2, Azure Virtual Machines.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): This is like renting a fully-furnished apartment. One gets the structure, the maintenance, and all the tools to live (a development environment, operating system, and database). One needs to only bring furniture (application code). Example: Google App Engine, Azure App Service.
Software as a Service (SaaS): This is like renting a pre-built hotel room. You just log in and use the finished product. The provider manages everything from the infrastructure to the application. Example: Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Gmail.
The cloud business is the massive, capital-intensive industry built around providing and maintaining these services, enabling enterprises worldwide to achieve unprecedented scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency in their digital operations.
Explosive growth
The global cloud computing market size was estimated at approximately $752.44 billion in 2024 and is projected to skyrocket, potentially reaching $2.39 trillion by 2030, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 20.4 per cent. This growth is fuelled by enterprise-wide digital adoption, proliferation of data, rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and the continuous move towards hybrid work models.
The largest revenue segment in the market is SaaS, which held a dominant share of around 54.0 per cent in 2024, driven by its ease of use and deployment for a wide range of business functions. However, IaaS is the most lucrative and fastest-growing segment, underlining the strong demand for core computing and storage resource.
The global cloud infrastructure market (IaaS and PaaS) is overwhelmingly dominated by an American-led oligopoly of three “Hyperscalers” who dictate the direction of technology, pricing, and innovation.
These three companies collectively control nearly two-thirds of the worldwide market, often referred to as the “Cloud Wars.” While the total revenue in this space exceeds $120 billion annually, Microsoft Azure is currently the most rapidly growing, leveraging its existing enterprise customer base and aggressive push into AI capabilities.
Trailing the leaders is China’s Alibaba Cloud (holding about 4 per cent share), which dominates the APAC region but faces intense competition from the US giants, who are heavily investing in localised data center regions globally.
India and its clout
The cloud computing market in India was valued at approximately $17.88 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach over $76.38 billion by 2030, according to one report. This growth is expected to occur at a CAGR of 26.5 per cent — significantly higher than the global average.
The acceleration is directly tied to the national ‘Digital India’ push, which has spurred digital adoption across government, BFSI and healthcare sectors.
Deployment: The public cloud model holds the largest share in India, but the hybrid cloud model is experiencing massive growth (forecasted at a CAGR of 28.4 per cent through 2030) as large Indian companies combine their existing on-premises infrastructure with hyperscale public clouds for compliance and cost management.
Hyperscaler investment: All major hyperscalers view India as a mission-critical geography. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud have significantly expanded their local “regions” (clusters of data centers), committing billions of dollars in capital expenditure. This localisation is essential to comply with upcoming data residency and sovereignty requirements, a key differentiator for Indian enterprises.
With global enterprises moving legacy workloads to the cloud, Indian IT majors (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech) are the primary partners. Their revenue streams from cloud-related services — migration, optimisation, security, and application modernisation—are exploding. This is a services-led growth story that feeds off the infrastructure built by the hyperscalers.
The current boom in the earnings of IT giants, a phenomenon driven by the robust performance of their cloud computing divisions, signals a fundamental and irreversible shift in the global technology landscape.
The recent fantastic growth reported by leaders like Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud Platform) is not just a quarterly success story; it is the crest of a massive, multi-trillion-dollar wave known as the global cloud business.
Demystifying the cloud
The term “cloud business” is often perceived as complex jargon, but at its heart, it is a straightforward concept: renting computing power, storage, and software over the internet.
Imagine building a massive house (a digital application). Traditionally, one would have to buy the land (servers), build the house (data centers), purchase all the plumbing and electrical systems (networking hardware), and hire a maintenance crew (IT staff). This is expensive, time-consuming, and inflexible.
Cloud computing providers, or Hyperscalers (like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud), change this entirely. They build enormous, hyper-efficient data centers across the globe and let businesses rent what they need, when they need it, on a pay-as-per-use basis.
This rental model is typically broken down into three main service layers, which form the core of the cloud business:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This is like renting the land and the basic structure of the house (servers, storage, and networking). One manages what one puts inside (operating systems, applications). Example: AWS EC2, Azure Virtual Machines.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): This is like renting a fully-furnished apartment. One gets the structure, the maintenance, and all the tools to live (a development environment, operating system, and database). One needs to only bring furniture (application code). Example: Google App Engine, Azure App Service.
Software as a Service (SaaS): This is like renting a pre-built hotel room. You just log in and use the finished product. The provider manages everything from the infrastructure to the application. Example: Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Gmail.
The cloud business is the massive, capital-intensive industry built around providing and maintaining these services, enabling enterprises worldwide to achieve unprecedented scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency in their digital operations.
Explosive growth
The global cloud computing market size was estimated at approximately $752.44 billion in 2024 and is projected to skyrocket, potentially reaching $2.39 trillion by 2030, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 20.4 per cent. This growth is fuelled by enterprise-wide digital adoption, proliferation of data, rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and the continuous move towards hybrid work models.
The largest revenue segment in the market is SaaS, which held a dominant share of around 54.0 per cent in 2024, driven by its ease of use and deployment for a wide range of business functions. However, IaaS is the most lucrative and fastest-growing segment, underlining the strong demand for core computing and storage resource.
The global cloud infrastructure market (IaaS and PaaS) is overwhelmingly dominated by an American-led oligopoly of three “Hyperscalers” who dictate the direction of technology, pricing, and innovation.
These three companies collectively control nearly two-thirds of the worldwide market, often referred to as the “Cloud Wars.” While the total revenue in this space exceeds $120 billion annually, Microsoft Azure is currently the most rapidly growing, leveraging its existing enterprise customer base and aggressive push into AI capabilities.
Trailing the leaders is China’s Alibaba Cloud (holding about 4 per cent share), which dominates the APAC region but faces intense competition from the US giants, who are heavily investing in localised data center regions globally.
India and its clout
The cloud computing market in India was valued at approximately $17.88 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach over $76.38 billion by 2030, according to one report. This growth is expected to occur at a CAGR of 26.5 per cent — significantly higher than the global average.
The acceleration is directly tied to the national ‘Digital India’ push, which has spurred digital adoption across government, BFSI and healthcare sectors.
Deployment: The public cloud model holds the largest share in India, but the hybrid cloud model is experiencing massive growth (forecasted at a CAGR of 28.4 per cent through 2030) as large Indian companies combine their existing on-premises infrastructure with hyperscale public clouds for compliance and cost management.
Hyperscaler investment: All major hyperscalers view India as a mission-critical geography. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud have significantly expanded their local “regions” (clusters of data centers), committing billions of dollars in capital expenditure. This localisation is essential to comply with upcoming data residency and sovereignty requirements, a key differentiator for Indian enterprises.
With global enterprises moving legacy workloads to the cloud, Indian IT majors (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech) are the primary partners. Their revenue streams from cloud-related services — migration, optimisation, security, and application modernisation—are exploding. This is a services-led growth story that feeds off the infrastructure built by the hyperscalers.
A
cloud, despite its airy name, requires a massive, physical, and ground-level infrastructure. The core component is the data center (DC), a fortified, high-tech structure housing thousands of servers.
Infrastructure requirements for a hyperscale cloud include:
Real estate: Vast land parcels are needed, typically located near major population centers for low latency, but away from natural disaster zones.
Power: The single largest resource. A hyperscale DC requires reliable, redundant, and massive power supply (often measured in hundreds of megawatts). Backup generators and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) are mandatory.
Cooling: Servers generate enormous heat, so advanced cooling systems (liquid cooling, highly efficient HVAC) are critical for maintaining right temperature and energy efficiency.
Connectivity: High-speed, redundant, and secure fiber-optic connectivity to ensure low latency and high bandwidth, connecting the DC to end-users and other DCs globally via submarine and terrestrial cables.
Security: Multi-layered physical security (biometrics, 24/7 surveillance) and cybersecurity protocols.
India is witnessing an unprecedented data center boom. Driven by data localisation laws and massive demand, India’s operational DC capacity (measured by IT load) was around 1.4 gw in 2024. This capacity is projected to double by 2027 based on existing construction and could grow fivefold by 2030 if the planned pipeline is fast-tracked.
Global and domestic players are earmarking up to $45 billion in cumulative capital expenditure (excluding servers) for this expansion. Hyperscalers (AWS, Google) and local conglomerates (Adani, Reliance Jio) are committing multi-gigawatt builds, primarily in key hubs like Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Delhi-NCR.
Electricity is a major challenge in builiding hyperscale DCs. Data centers require clean, stable, and increasingly green energy. India is actively working on sourcing reliable, large-scale renewable energy tie-ups to meet the massive power demand without increasing its carbon footprint. Securing the necessary environmental clearances and high-speed fiber connectivity for remote sites is an ongoing logistical challenge.