Amazon Has Reached A Staggering Level Of Dominance When It Comes To Cloud Computing

Amazon's cloud computing service, AWS, has more than five times the combined capacity of its next 14 rivals, according to a research report by Gartner, as cited in The Seattle Times' recent look at Amazon's efforts to win the contract for the CIA's cloud services.

Most people regard Amazon as that online book and retail company.

But the Gartner report argues that Amazon has reached a staggering level of dominance in enterprise-level computing services for big companies. The Seattle Times:

AWS generates roughly $3 billion in annual revenue, according to analyst estimates, by offering services to businesses at a fraction of what it would cost if those businesses owned and ran their own computers.

Amazon's total revenues are ~$61 billion. The CIA contract, which Amazon has won once but must win again after a protest by IBM re-opened the bidding, is worth an additional $600 million to Amazon. To give you an idea of just how far ahead of some other companies Amazon is, Network World notes that "No other company is really close to Amazon in terms of its offerings, according to Gartner, but there are a variety of niche players. Outsourcer CSC, for example, receives high marks in the report and is named as the only other leader in the market."

And look who the "niche players" are:

Microsoft and Rackspace are listed in the "visionaries" category, while telco-oriented providers Verizon Terremark and Savvis are in the "challengers" quadrant, along with Dimension Data. Joyent, Tier 3, Virtustream, Fujitsu, SoftLayer (now owned by IBM), GoGrid, HP and IBM are considered "niche players" by Gartner.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.