Gartner: Microsoft #1 in Database Revenue; AWS Passes Oracle; Google Cloud Gains

The Top 5 vendors concede ground to the rest of the pack

John Foley Apr 20

I just returned from a week’s vacation, and the database industry has been relatively quiet except for this: Oracle dropped a notch in database revenue marketshare, ceding its former #2 position to AWS, according to Gartner.

Also: Microsoft ranked #1 in 2021, as it did the previous year. Google Cloud moved up into the #4 spot, displacing SAP. IBM dropped to #5.

So Gartner’s top 5 ranking by database revenue for 2021 looks like this:

1. Microsoft - 24.0%

2. AWS - 23.9%

3. Oracle - 20.6%

4. Google - 6.5%

5. IBM - 5.6%

As you can see, Microsoft and AWS are neck and neck at #1 and #2. You can read Gartner analyst Merv Adrian’s overview here.

The changes are not surprising. As I wrote in January,

“Microsoft, AWS, and Google Cloud are becoming the new center of gravity in the database market.”

Meanwhile, Oracle, IBM, and SAP each lost marketshare and slipped in the standing, in Gartner’s estimation.

What Happened?

How have the Big 3 cloud providers succeeded in nudging Oracle and the others down the Gartner marketshare ranking? In my earlier analysis, I identified the following characteristics that help explain the Big 3’s emergence as database powerhouses:

• Continuous innovation. Each offers a steady stream of improvements.

• Fast & easy integration. Surrounding services such as storage, data migration, IoT, ML frameworks are part of an integrated, overarching infrastructure and architecture.

• Purpose-built databases. Each offers a range of database options, both home-grown and third-party, for different types of workloads, such as data warehousing, transactions, application modernization, graphs, etc.

• Flexible deployment options. The cloud providers offer both fully managed and self-managed database services, and solutions for hybrid and multi-clouds.

You can download my full industry analysis (published in February) below.

Cloud Database Report

The Cloud Database Report 2022 & Top 20 Vendors

Today I’m sharing the new Cloud Database Report 2022, which includes an updated list of the Cloud Database Top 20 vendor companies. This in-depth report is available to all subscribes as a PDF downlo…

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3 months ago · John Foley

‘Stunning Growth’

The changing of the guard is happening in a rapidly growing database market as more workloads continue to be deployed and migrated to cloud-based databases.

Per Gartner, the DBMS market (on-premises and cloud combined) grew 22.3% in 2021 to nearly $80 billion. That’s twice the size of the market five years ago.

Cloud services represented 49% of database revenue in 2021. “The growth has been stunning,” notes Adrian.

Gartner analyst Adam Ronthal shared the chart below that shows the DBMS musical chairs over the past 10 years.

Adam Ronthal @ARonthal

It's April... and that means it's time for a fresh bowl of #DBMS spaghetti. This year's DBMS revenue rankings shows #cloud continuing to surge as hyperscalers solidify their market position. As always, pure-play cloud vendors are in light blue. #GartnerDA #datamanagement

April 14th 2022

12 Retweets46 Likes

The Rise of Cloud-Native

During 2021, the big, established database vendors gave up ground to rising cloud-native database providers like MongoDB, Snowflake, Databricks, et al.

The top 5 accounted for 80.6% of overall market revenue in 2021, down from 86.9% the previous year. Even Microsoft, at #1, lost a bit of share year to year — 24.0% in 2021 vs. 24.3% in 2020.

It seems almost certain from Gartner’s trend analysis that 2022 will be the year that cloud DB revenue surpasses on-prem revenue. In other words, legacy vendors will be under continued pressure.

Revenue vs. Innovation

It should be noted that this latest Gartner report is an estimate of marketshare based on revenue. A vendor may have lots of innovation but little revenue. And vice versa.

Gartner’s Major Quadrant for Cloud DBMSes better reflects the relative strengths of competitors using criteria other than revenue. It’s a different lens into the market. See my earlier post on Gartner’s MQ below.

Cloud Database Report

Gartner’s Cloud Database MQ: Who Didn't Make It and Why

Gartner’s famous Magic Quadrant has long served as a proof point of a vendor’s relevance in its respective market. I get emails and press releases from companies that make the list. And crickets from those who don’t…

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2 months ago · John Foley