Thematic Intelligence: Cloud Services Sector Scorecard Q2 2024 Update

Thematic Intelligence: Cloud Services Sector Scorecard Q2 2024 Update

Summary

The thematic screen of GlobalData’s cloud services sector scorecard is led by the global hyperscalers Microsoft and Amazon, with Alphabet and IBM also in the top 10. Microsoft, in partnership with OpenAI and Alphabet are aggressively investing in generative artificial intelligence (AI), developing foundational large language models (LLM), and building the infrastructure to offer related services to customers. However, the long-term cloud services model remains unclear, as several vendors, spearheaded by Meta, Mistral AI, H20.ai, and Databricks, are open-sourcing their LLMs.

The trade dispute between the US and China has not escalated further since our last update. Indications at the end of 2023 that China may be starting to make progress on domestic production of advanced semiconductors remain unconfirmed. As such, the leading Chinese vendors, including Huawei and Baidu, retain weaker thematic scores than their US counterparts due to their limited access to AI chips and advanced semiconductor manufacturing technologies. This continues to disrupt the competitive landscape in the application software market, as the inability to run AI algorithms in high-performance hardware will slow down China’s progress.

Scope

• This sector scorecard provides a top-down, comprehensive outlook for the key players in the cloud services sector over the next two years, based on the key themes set to transform their industry landscape.

• Companies that invest in the right themes become success stories. Those that miss the important themes in their industry end up as failures.
• GlobalData’s thematic research ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors. It has a proven track record of identifying the important themes early, enabling companies to make the right investments ahead of the competition, and secure that all-important competitive advantage.
• At GlobalData, we have developed a unique thematic methodology for ranking all major companies in all major sectors based on their relative strength in the big themes that are impacting their industries.
• Our thematic engine tags over 180 million data items across six alternative data sets-patents, jobs, deals, filings, social media, and news-to themes. The vast datasets within our thematic engine help our analysts to produce sector scorecards that identify the companies best placed to succeed in a future filled with multiple disruptive threats.