State of the Multi-Cloud Global Infrastructure (March 2023)

The cloud computing market is experiencing strong growth and the top four cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba Cloud) are leading the way. According to reported earnings from last year (FY 2022), these top providers control almost 80% of the market! The market is also growing in all regions of the world, with a whopping $47 billion increase from the previous year.

According to a recent study, ONE of the reasons for adopting a multi-cloud strategy is to address gaps in regional data governance and sovereignty requirements. But what exactly does the global datacenter footprint of these top cloud providers look like? I recently looked into this, and here’s a breakdown of the latest information as of March 2023:

AWS Summary (March 2023)

29 regions globally + 5 coming soon; 2 GovCloud regions; 31 regions globally + 5 coming soon

• North America: 7 regions (including 2 AWS GovCloud regions) + 1 coming soon
• South America: 1 region
• Europe: 8 regions
• Africa: 1 region
• Asia Pacific: 10 regions + 2 coming soon
• Middle East: 2 regions + 1 coming soon
• Australia and New Zealand: 2 regions + 1 coming soon

Azure Summary (March 2023)

37 regions globally + 16 coming soon; 7 GovCloud regions + 1 coming soon; 44 regions globally + 17 coming soon

• North America: 11 Azure regions + 2 coming soon
• South America: 1 Azure region + 1 coming soon
• Europe: 9 Azure regions with 8 coming soon
• Africa: 1 region
• Asia Pacific: 12 Azure regions + 4 coming soon
• Middle East: 2 regions + 2 coming soon
• Australia and New Zealand: 3 regions + 1 coming soon

GCP Summary (March 2023)

36 regions globally + 12 coming soon

• North America: 11 regions + 1 coming soon
• South America: 2 regions
• Europe: 11 regions + 1 coming soon
• Africa: 1 region
• Asia Pacific: 9 regions
• Middle East: 1 region + 2 coming soon
• Australia and New Zealand: 2 regions

Alibaba Summary (March 2023)

28 regions globally

• North America: 2 regions
• South America: None
• Europe: 2 regions
• Africa: None
• Asia Pacific: 22 regions
• Middle East: 1 region
• Australia and New Zealand: 1 region

There are only a limited number of cases where a single cloud provider has a presence in a country where others do not. For instance, in Europe, Azure has data centers in Wales (Cardiff), Norway (Oslo) and they are building datacenters in Greece, Austria, and Denmark that are not currently offered by other cloud providers. In the Middle East, AWS has a presence in Bahrain that is unique among cloud providers. Finally, in Asia, Alibaba has a data center in the Philippines that is not currently offered by other providers.