Feb 07, 2017 10:51 AM EST By Jordan Pine, UniversityHerald Reporter

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) still holds the biggest global market share in terms of cloud computing infrastructure, more than the combined stats of its three closest rivals like Microsoft, Google, and IBM. However, the new and emerging trend of multi-cloud, where organizations have four or more cloud vendors, could potentially help other players to catch up in the years to come.

The recent Canalys calculations reveal that AWS took 33.8 percent of the global pie while Microsoft, Google, and IBM had a combined 30.8 percent. Smaller players like Alibaba follow with 2.4 percent and Oracle at 1.7 percent.

Estimated 2017 spending on cloud infrastructure services could total to as much as $55.8 billion, an increase of 48 percent from last year. Demand for cloud services remains strong, prompting cloud companies to accelerate the building of data centers.

Moreover, Canalys research analyst Daniel Liu added that strict data sovereignty laws are in place, which calls for personal data to be stored in servers with physical locations within a country. This is why cloud companies are building cloud infrastructure in key markets like Canada, Germany, the U.K., Japan, China and the Middle East, ZDNet reported.

Last year, AWS has launched 11 new availability zones across the globe with 4 in Canada and the U.K. in the last quarter. IBM now has a total of 50 cloud data centers worldwide with a newly-opened one in the U.K. while Microsoft has added centers in Germany and also in U.K.

Google and Oracle were aiming at gaining a foothold in the Asia Pacific region and built their first data centers in Japan. Meanwhile, Alibaba is expanding as well with 4 new data centers in Australia, Germany, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

However, there is now a new trend emerging in cloud computing which is the use of multi-cloud services. The Microsoft and 451 Research study confirmed that one-third of organizations have four or more cloud service providers.

Multi-cloud offers organizations with more options by supporting different applications and workloads that best suit the client's needs. Moreover, organizations can avoid the scenario of "keeping all your eggs in one basket," which reduces their vulnerability from issues like bandwidth problems, cloud data outages, and vendor lock-in, Network World reported.

The emergence of multi-cloud actually alters the "cloud computing wars" scene with more organizations able to support small players to catch up with the big guys like AWS. The competition is also good for business bringing more flexibility, potential savings from cost and better solutions.

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