Cloud Storage Report 2017 – Dropbox Loses Market Share But is Still the Biggest Provider on Mobile

Total Number of Users

From all users of cloud storage integrations across our customers, Dropbox is with 47,3% the #1 choice
followed by Google Drive with 26,9% and Microsoft Azure with 15,3%.

PROVIDER % OF ALL USERS

Dropbox 47,3%

Google Drive 26,9%

OneDrive 15,3%

Box 10,5%

If you compare these numbers with our last report which was released in November 2016 you will
realize that Dropbox massively lost users to Google Drive, OneDrive and Box over the last 5 months. It
seems like a lot of users switched to the more competitive offerings from Google and Microsoft. What is
impressive though, is the growth of Box.com since they seem to focus more on enterprise users.
Total Usage

When it comes to usage of the cloud vendors, Dropbox is leading with a massive 77%. Followed by
Google with 17,2% and Microsoft with 5,1%.

PROVIDER % OF ALL USERS

Dropbox 77%

Google Drive 17,2%

 PROVIDER % OF ALL USERS

OneDrive 5,1%

Box 0,8%

Compared to the 2016 report, we get a similar picture. Dropbox is losing share to all other providers, but
still has the clear leadership position.
Cloud Storage Market Overview:
Cloud Storage Market is expected to reach $97,415 million by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 24.8% from
2016 to 2022. Cloud storage is a complete solution package offered by cloud storage providers such as
Amazon Web Service, Inc., IBM Corporation, VMware, Inc., and many others to maintain, manage, and
store all kind of data in a private or public data center, which is accessible through the Internet from
multiple locations. Cloud provides easy access to data and security to all user types including large and
small and medium enterprises.
The global cloud storage market is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA. Major
cloud computing providers offer cloud storage solutions across all developed and developing regions
including North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. However, several underdeveloped regions such as Latin
America, Middle East, and Africa with low ICT investment gradually adopt cloud storage solutions.
Global Cloud Storage Market Segmentation
The global cloud storage market is segmented into private, public, and hybrid models based upon
deployment mode. Hybrid model is a combination of both private and public deployment modes, which
enables the users to control cloud space as per privacy requirement. In addition, the market includes
several industry verticals such as Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), government and
education, healthcare, telecommunication & IT, retail, manufacturing, media & entertainment, and
others. The scope for others segment in industry vertical includes business and professional services,
logistics & transportation, and construction.
The global market for cloud storage industry was valued at $21,175 million in 2015, and is estimated to
grow at a CAGR of 24.8% to reach $97,415 million by 2022. Growth in demand for low cost data storage,
backup, and data protection augments the growth of the cloud storage market among several user groups
including small, medium, and large enterprises. In addition, several industry verticals such as BFSI, retail,
healthcare, and public sector with a large customer base tend to store critical business information of
stakeholders in cloud storage, owing to data privacy and client information, which in turn augment the
global cloud storage market growth.
Based on component type, the global cloud storage market is segmented into two types, namely,
software, and service. The major factors that influence the cloud storage solutions market is high level of
cost savings on total cost of ownership and increase in need for data backup and protection by several
user types including small, medium, and large enterprises. In the recent years, cloud storage providers are
promoting cloud solutions across various geographical regions including North America, Europe, Asia-
Pacific, and others to augment cloud adoption. Managed services are estimated to experience the highest
growth rate during the forecast period as these services help reduce the time and cost linked with
optimizing the system in the initial phase of deployment.
Asia-Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing regional segment in the near future, with the highest
CAGR. Industry participants have realized the importance of strengthening the overall cloud storage
market to ensure data recovery and back up and easy accessibility of documents from any device and
location. However, the LAMEA region slowly adopts cloud storage solutions across industry verticals such
as government, retail, and healthcare. Growth in demand for hybrid cloud storage majorly drives the
market in the region.
Key players profiled in the report are Amazon Web Services, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, IBM Corporation,
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP, Google, Inc., VMware, Inc., Oracle Corporation, EMC
Corporation, Rackspace Hosting, Inc., and Red Hat, Inc. The report discusses the key strategies adopted
by the companies in addition to the current trends, upcoming opportunities, and restraints in the market
growth, with detailed information about their impacts.
Top Impacting Factors
Who’s winning the consumer cloud storage wars?

In seemingly no time, cloud storage has become a commodity product. It's already
relatively cheap and competition is driving prices even lower.
On the enterprise side, Box, Amazon Web Services (AMZN, -1.37%), IBM (IBM, -
0.24%), and EMC (EMC) are competing for the largest corporate customers. On the
consumer side, Dropbox, Microsoft’s OneDrive (MSFT, -0.47%) and Google’s
Drive (GOOG, -0.99%) are competing to store the photos, documents, music, and
movies of everyday consumers.
It's the latter market that has proven to be particularly interesting. Where the
enterprise cloud storage market is a fierce battle among hulking warships—the most
firepower wins—the consumer market is much more akin to a skirmish fought
among speedboats of varying sizes. In a bid for the fickle attention of consumers, a
clever maneuver can go a long way.
Microsoft and Google entered the consumer market with a huge splash, thanks to
their massive installed user bases of people using Office and Gmail and Docs,
respectively. But the company in the lead is San Francisco's Dropbox. Though
Dropbox is just six years old, it had a four-year jump on Google, which introduced
Drive in 2012. (Microsoft has offered various cloud storage services since 2008,
originally under the name SkyDrive.)
Dropbox claims 300 million users as of May. Google Drive has 240 million users as of
September. Microsoft says OneDrive has “more than” 250 million users.

It’s difficult to discern which company is winning on user numbers alone. Many
people have accounts with both services, and even those accounts don’t reveal how
frequently users are actually storing their files with either service.
One way to learn more about which cloud service users prefer is to through third-
party app providers. CloudOn, a startup that makes word processing software for
mobile devices, has accumulated eight million users since it launched in 2012. The
app’s users connect their accounts to cloud storage services in order to
automatically save their work and collaborate with others. In data shared
with Fortune, the company revealed that its eight million users prefer Dropbox over
Google Drive by a multiple of three. Microsoft’s OneDrive came in at a distant third.
 Courtesy:
CloudOn
Whereas 3.7 million CloudOn users connected their accounts to Dropbox, fewer
than 2 million connected with Google Drive and fewer than 1 million connected to
Microsoft OneDrive. The ratio of documents read on each cloud service matches the
ratio of connected accounts. On CloudOn, than 1.1 million Dropbox documents are
read each month, which is more than that of Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive
combined. Dropbox, which is valued at $10 billion and considered a prime candidate
to make an initial public offering, is a clear winner among mobile-friendly
consumers.
This week, Microsoft recognized that people who use Microsoft Office might not
love OneDrive. The company announced a partnership with Dropbox, allowing users
to access their Dropbox accounts directly from Office and edit their Office files from
the Dropbox app.

Cloud Storage Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth and Trends by Forecast 2017 2023

Market Highlights:

Data security is a major restraining factor in cloud storage. Due to rapid growth in malicious hacking

technologies, data security is at risk and can lead to heavy losses for the company if critical data is

hacked. Other restraining factors in cloud storage market would be regulatory compliance issues and
lack of high network bandwidth for data transfer. These issues can cause hindrance in growth of cloud

storage market.

Major factors driving the growth of cloud storage market are high demand for hybrid cloud storage and

growing need for enterprise mobility. Need for easy implementation of cloud storage systems is another

factor fueling the growth of cloud storage market. The solution segment is further classified into primary

storage, cloud storage gateway, data archiving, disaster recovery and back up storage. Out of

these Cloud Storage Market gateway has gained maximum popularity owing to easy integration into

existing infrastructure of the enterprise.

Cloud storage allows enterprises to store data on remote servers that can be accessed through internet.

These remote servers are maintained, operated and managed by cloud storage service providers. Cloud

storage is basically a virtual mode of data storage. The data stored on cloud can be accessed and shared

across devices through internet.

The global cloud storage market is expected to grow at approx. USD 104 Billion by 2023, at 25% of CAGR

between 2017 and 2023.

Major Key Players:

 Amazon Web Services (U.S.)

 IBM Corporation (U.S.)
 Microsoft Corporation (U.S.)
 VMware, Inc. (U.S.)
 HP Enterprise Company (U.S.)
 Google, Inc. (U.S.)
 Oracle Corporation (U.S.)
 Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (U.S.)
 EMC Corporation (U.S.)
 Dropbox, Inc. (U.S.)

Cloud Storage Market Segmentation:

The cloud storage market has been segmented on the basis of solution, service, deployment and

vertical. The managed services is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period owing

to better user experience. Managed services offer remote management of IT infrastructure and hence

large number of companies are opting for managed services.

Market Research Analysis:

The global cloud storage market, by geography, has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia

Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA), and South America. In the global cloud storage market, Asia Pacific

is anticipated to witness relatively faster adoption and hence the growth rate as compared with other

regions. Within Asia Pacific, the reasons fuelling the market growth are the growing demand for hybrid

cloud storage, increasing need for enterprise data storage, and rising cloud-based applications.

Across Europe, countries including Germany, France and the U.K. are anticipated to drive the growth of

cloud storage market. In Europe, the presence of several market players that provide cloud services

have fueled the market growth. The presence of high end infrastructure ensures higher penetration of

internet and hence better connectivity.

Overview of Cloud Market in 2017 and Beyond

Industry analyst firm Gartner predicts that the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market will grow by
38.6% in 2017 to reach $34.6 billion by the end of the year. IaaS shows no sign of slowing down in the
foreseeable future, and is expected to reach $71.55 billion by 2021, a CAGR of 29.7%.

If IaaS maintains this growth rate through 2021, it will likely surpass software-as-a-service (SaaS) to
become the 2nd largest segment of the cloud industry sometime in the next decade, behind only Cloud
Advertising. The SaaS industry is expected to grow by 20.1% to reach $46.3 billion by the end of 2017.
According to the same Gartner report, SaaS is forecasted to grow to $75.73 billion by 2021 with a CAGR
of 18.4%.

Although much smaller than SaaS and IaaS, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is expected to grow at a
formidable 23.5% to reach $8.85 billion by the end of 2017. By 2021, Gartner expects PaaS to increase
by a CAGR of 19.9% to a total market size of $14.80 billion.
Custom Applications and IaaS Trends 2017
Get insights on IaaS adoption trends for AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, etc, and the
security risks facing custom applications built on IaaS platforms.

Public Cloud Market Share

In terms of revenue, Amazon Web Services dominates the public cloud market with a 47.1% market
share. In its most recent earnings statement for Q1 of 2017, AWS reported revenues of $3.66 billion, a
42% increase from this time last year. While Microsoft Azure is gradually catching up to Amazon, it only
holds 10.0% of the market.

However, in its recent Q4 2017 earnings report Microsoft reported that revenue generated from Azure
grew at more than 97% compared to Q4 2016, which follows a similar growth (93%) they reported in
their Q3 2017 earnings report, marking a growth rate that’s double what AWS achieved.

These two big players are then followed by Google Cloud Platform (3.95%) and IBM Softlayer (2.77%).
However, when looking at application workload distribution between different IaaS providers, a slightly
different trend emerges. According to a recent Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) report (Download a free
copy of the report here), Amazon Web Services is the most popular public cloud infrastructure platform,
comprising 41.5% of application workloads in the public cloud. While Amazon has long been viewed as
the dominant provider of public cloud infrastructure, Microsoft Azure is gaining ground quickly in
application workload.

Azure currently holds 29.4% of the installed base, measured by application workloads. Google Cloud
Platform trails with 3.0% of application workloads followed by IBM SoftLayer, Rackspace, and a long tail
of providers that comprise another 20.7% of the market. The scope of long tail provider usage is
surprising, and may indicate the market is still at an early stage of maturity.
IaaS Adoption Trends

Future of Application Workloads

Enterprises are gradually divesting from their data centers and moving applications workloads to the
public cloud. According to the CSA survey report, in 2016, 60.9% of applications workloads were still in
enterprise data centers. By the end of 2017, however, fewer than half (46.2%) will remain there. This is,
in part, due to new applications primarily being deployed in the cloud, and because enterprises plan to
migrate 20.7% of their existing applications to the public cloud.
As expected, larger enterprises have the most custom applications deployed at their organizations. On
average, companies with over 50,000 employees had 788 apps deployed, compared to 22 at companies
with less than 1,000 employees.
What’s holding back IaaS adoption?

Security concerns

Despite the incredible progress cloud service providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have made
in the past few years around the security of their services, many enterprises continue to have
reservations about IaaS adoption, primarily based on security concerns.

Perceived threats to custom applications running in IaaS

When asked about the greatest threats to applications running in the public cloud in the CSA survey
report, the single most common response (66.5%) was sensitive data uploaded to the cloud. Some
organizations have regulatory compliance and data residency requirements that can prevent them from
uploading data to a cloud environment.

That’s followed closely by third-party account compromise (56.9%). With customers being at fault in the
majority of breaches, organizations simply need to follow security best practices to alleviate their
reservations about cloud adoption.
Recent data exposures

In the last month, we’ve seen several examples of companies that had exposed data due to simple
misconfiguration of their IaaS environments, particularly leaving S3 buckets with sensitive data publicly
accessible. While this is a widespread concern, this type of exposure is easily avoidable, and you can
find more on this is our recent blog here.

Despite security concerns, overall confidence is high

Security concerns may be the largest barrier to cloud adoption, but generally speaking, IT professionals
view public cloud providers as being secure. A majority of respondents (62.9%) say the public cloud is as
secure or more secure than their own data center.

This increasing confidence in cloud security could be one reason why enterprises have rapidly moved
these applications out of the data center to the public cloud. Another reason why the majority of IT
leaders are in favor of cloud adoption may be due to the sizable investments cloud providers made to
their own security.
It may also be due to the fact that 3rd party security solutions, such as a CASB, have overcome the
security gap between what an enterprise can achieve in their on-premises IT infrastructure and what
they get from a cloud service provider.
The cloud storage market size is estimated to grow from USD 23.76 Billion in 2016 to USD 74.94 Billion
by 2021, at a CAGR of 25.8 % from 2016 to 2021.

Factors such as high demand for hybrid cloud storage, growing need for enterprise mobility, and need
for easy implementation of cloud storage solutions are fueling the growth of the cloud storage market.
The report aims at estimating the market size and future growth potential of the market across different
segments such as solutions, services, deployment models, organization size, industry verticals, and
regions. The base year considered for the study is 2015 and the forecast period is from 2016 to 2021.

The research methodology used to estimate and forecast the cloud storage market begins with
capturing data on key vendor revenues through secondary research such as cloud computing
association, associations of financial professional, information system security association, and many
more. The vendor offerings are also taken into consideration to determine the market segmentation.
The bottom-up procedure is employed to arrive at the overall market size of the global market from the
revenue of the key players in the market. After arriving at the overall market size, the total market is
split into several segments and subsegments, which are then verified through primary research by
conducting extensive interviews with key people, such as CEOs, VPs, directors, and executives. The data
triangulation and market breakdown procedures are employed to complete the overall market
engineering process and arrive at the exact statistics for all segments. The breakdown of primary profiles
is depicted in the below figure:

The cloud storage ecosystem comprises service providers such as Amazon Web Services (Seattle,
Washington, U.S.); IBM Corporation (Armonk, New York, U.S.); Microsoft Corporation (Redmond,
Washington, U.S.); VMware Inc. (Palo Alto, California, U.S.); HP Enterprise Company (Palo Alto,
California, U.S.); Google, Inc. (Mountain View, California, U.S.); Oracle Corporation (Redwood City,
California, U.S.); EMC Corporation (Hopkinton, Massachusetts, U.S.); Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (San
Antonio, Texas, U.S.); and Dropbox, Inc. (San Francisco, California, U.S.). Other stakeholders of the cloud
storage market include cloud vendors, application design and development service providers, managed
service providers, and data quality service providers.

Key Target Audience

 Cloud vendors
 Application design and development service providers
 System integrators/migration service providers
 Consultancy firms/advisory firms
 Training and education service providers
 Data integration service providers
  Managed service providers
 Data quality service providers

“The research study answers several questions for the stakeholders, primarily which market segments to
focus in during the next two to five years for prioritizing the efforts and investments”.

Scope of the Report

The research report categorizes the cloud storage market to forecast the revenues and analyze the
trends in each of the following sub-markets:

Global Cloud Storage Market, by Solution

 Primary storage
 Disaster recovery and backup storage
 Cloud storage gateway
 Data archiving

Global Cloud Storage Market, by Service

 Training and consulting

 Support and maintenance
 Cloud integration and migration
 Managed services

Global Cloud Storage Market, by Deployment Model

 Public Cloud
 Private Cloud
 Hybrid Cloud

Global Cloud Storage Market, by Organization Size

 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

 Large Enterprises

Global Cloud Storage Market, by Vertical

 BFSI
 Consumer goods and retail
 Education
 Government and public sector
 Healthcare and life sciences
 Manufacturing
 Media and entertainment
 Telecommunication and ITES
 Others
Global Cloud Storage Market, by Region

 North America
 Europe
 Middle East and Africa (MEA)
 Asia-Pacific (APAC)
 Latin America

Available Customizations

With the given market data, Markets and Markets offers customizations based on the company-specific
needs. The following customization options are available for the report:

Geographic Analysis

 Further breakdown of the APAC market into countries contributing 75% to the regional market
size
 Further breakdown of the North American market into countries contributing 75% to the
regional market size
 Further breakdown of the Latin American market into countries contributing 75% to the regional
market size
 Further breakdown of the MEA market into countries contributing 75% to the regional market
size
 Further breakdown of the European market into countries contributing 75% to the regional
market size

The cloud storage market is expected to grow from USD 23.76 Billion in 2016 to USD 74.94 Billion by
2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 25.8% during the forecast period. Increasing
adoption of hybrid cloud storage and growing need for enterprise mobility has led to the increased
demand for cloud storage solutions and services.

The cloud storage gateway solution is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period,
while primary storage is projected to have the largest market size in 2016 in the cloud storage market.
Cloud storage solutions offer enterprises the flexibility to scale up or scale down the storage capacity,
depending on the business requirements. The adoption of cloud storage solutions among the
enterprises increased due to their benefits such as reliability, accessibility, and disaster recovery. In
addition, cloud storage offers features such as centralized access and reduced IT administrative tasks.

The managed services segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Due
to the presence of advanced technologies in the cloud storage market, companies are focusing on
updating their storage systems to keep pace with their competitors. The major factors that have been
driving the adoption of cloud storage are high demand for hybrid cloud storage, growing need for
enterprise mobility, and need for easy implementation of cloud storage solutions. However, regulatory
compliance issues and lack of high network bandwidth for data transfer are hindering the growth of
market.
North America is expected to have the largest market share in 2016, whereas the Asia-Pacific (APAC)
region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2016 to 2021, in the cloud storage market. Factors
such as rising need for big data storage and increasing adoption of cloud storage gateways would also
drive the demand for cloud storage solutions, globally.
Top 10 best cloud storage services of 2017

1. Dropbox
Price: 2GB free. 1TB for $10 a month (£6.58, around AU$11) with Dropbox Plus

2. Google Drive
Price: 15GB free. 100GB for $1.99 a month (£1.59, around AU$2.50). 1TB for $9.99 a month
(£8, around AU$13).

3. Mega
Price: 50GB free. 200GB for €4.99 a month (£4.50, $6, around AU$7.50)

4. OneDrive
Price: 5GB free. 50GB for $1.99 a month (£1.99, around AU$2.50)
5. iCloud
Price: 5GB free. 50GB for $0.99 a month (£0.79, AU$1.49). 200GB for $3.99 (£2.49, AU$4.49)

6. Box
Price: 10GB free. 100GB for around $5 a month (£3.50, around AU$6)

7. NextCloud
Price: Free to install and use. Self-hosting so storage costs vary. NextCloud Box is $79.99
(around £60, around AU$100)

8. SpiderOak
Price: 2GB free for 60 days only. 250GB for $9 a month (around £7, AU$11.50). 1TB for $12 a
month (around £9, AU$15)

9. IDrive
Price: 5GB free. 2TB for $52 a year (around £40, AU$66)

10. pCloud
Price: 20GB free. 500GB for $3.99 a month (around £3, AU$5). 2TB for $7.99 a month (around
£6, AU$10)

Cloud storage comparison

Amazon
OneDrive Dropbox Google Drive Box
Cloud Drive

10GB with 250MB for free

File size website, none plan, 5GB for
10GB 5TB 2GB*
restrictions? with Dropbox paid personal
apps plan

Free storage? 5GB** 2GB 15GB 10GB No***

Can I earn
extra free No** Yes No No No
storage?
 Amazon
OneDrive Dropbox Google Drive Box
Cloud Drive

$12/year for
$2/month
unlimited
$2/month $10/month for 100GB, $10/month for
Paid plans photos,
for 50GB** 1TB $10/month 100GB
$60/year for
for 1TB
unlimited files

Windows, Mac,
Windows, Windows, Mac,
Linux, Android, Windows,
Mac, Windows, Android, iOS,
OSes iOS, Windows Mac, Android,
Android, iOS, Mac, Windows
supported Phone, iOS, Kindle
Windows Android, iOS Phone,
BlackBerry, Fire
Phone BlackBerry
Kindle Fire