How Much Are Cloud Providers Making?

How much are the major players in cloud computing making from their cloud operations? The answers are all over the map.

Many cloud computing providers are private, and don't disclose their revenue. Most of the leading publicly-held companies see cloud computing as a promising source of future growth, though perhaps not a large percentage of current revenue. And there's some significant differences between companies providing software as a service (SaaS) and those offering infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Here's a look at some of the public companies and their cloud computing revenues:

SERVICE PROVIDERS

Salesforce.com
In February 2009, chairman and CEO Marc Benioff boasted that Salesforce.com (CRM) was the "first billion-dollar cloud computing company," when the company announced 2009 year-end revenue of $1.077 billion, a 44 percent increase from 2008. All eyes will be on Salesforce.com on Feb. 24 to see if the SaaS provider will maintain its $1 billion revenue status when it reports its fiscal year end results.

"At a time when capital is precious, big-ticket software purchases just don’t make sense," said Benioff at the time.

Subscription and support, which accounts for around 92% of Salesforce.com's total revenue was $984.5 million in fiscal year 09, with professional services contributing $92.2 million. Gross profit was $856.3 million, compared to $577.1 million for 2008, and $378.2 million in 2007. Net paying customers rose 14,400 during fiscal 2009 at 55,400. In November, the company raised its full year revenue guidance to $1.294 billion. (SaaS)

Amazon Web Services
Online retailing behemoth Amazon (AMZN) has been touting cloud computing since August 2006. Despite the ongoing publicity and a sizable ecosystem of third-party management and monitoring services around Amazon Web Services, cloud computing represents a small portion of Amazon's financials. On its balance sheet, Amazon includes AWS under "Other," which represented just 3 percent ($735 million) of Amazon's $24.5 billion total revenue in 2009. "Other" also represented 3 percent of Amazon's 2008 financials in which it reported total revenue of $19.2 billion. Until Amazon provides more detailed reporting on AWS revenues, the best guesstimate of its annual cloud revenues is "less than $735 million." (IaaS)

Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace (RAX) increased its cloud revenue 124.8% for its fiscal 2009 to $56.4 million, compared to $25.1 million for 2008. Cloud revenue contributed about 8% of its total net revenue for the year ($629.0 million). Rackspace finished the year with 71,621 cloud customers, compared to 34,820 cloud users in 2008. The 2009 customer count includes SaaS customers for Rackspace's Jungle Disk online backup offering using Rackspace storage. Jungle Disk customers using third-party storage are excluded. Rackspace acquired Jungle Disk in October 2008, the same month in which it announced its cloud business. (IaaS, SaaS)

Savvis
Cloud computing revenue contributed $7.4 million to Savvis' full-year 2009 revenue, a 93% increase from 2008 for the colocation and managed hosting provider. However, that's less than 1 percent of Savvis' total revenue of $874.4 million, which increased 2 percent from 2008. Hosting remained the biggest part of Savvis' business, raking in a total revenue of $607.3 million in 2009, an 8 percent increase from 2008. During the company's year-end financials announcement,  CFO Greg Freiberg said Savvis (SVVS) experienced churn in its flagship colocation business late in Q4. Savvis announced its first foray into cloud computing in February 2009. (IaaS, PaaS)

Terremark Worldwide
This Miami-based managed hosting and colocation specialist increased its annualized cloud computing run rate to $17.2 million during the third quarter, a 30% increase from the previous quarter. Back in November, Terremark (TMRK) attributed the majority of its then annual run rate of $13.2 million to customers in the federal government. At that time, Terremark said it had booked $3 million in additional business from existing customers and expanded into additional space at its campus in Santa Clara, Calif. Terremark launched its Enterprise Cloud in June 2008. (IaaS)

NetSuite (N), which provides on-demand CRM and ERP applications through a Software as a Service model, reported revenue of $166 million in 2009, an increase of 9 percent from a year earlier. The company reported a net loss of $6.5 million for the fourth quarter and $23.3 million for the year. "In a year that saw many of our ERP competitors’ sales decline, NetSuite achieved record financial results," said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. (SaaS)

HARDWARE VENDORS

3PAR
A leading global provider of utility storage, 3PAR (PAR) reported a 4 percent increase in its fiscal third quarter revenue ending Dec. 31 to $50.1 million. This represented a 9 percent uptick to its revenue in the prior quarter, which ended Sept. 30. The company enables customers to deliver software and hardware as a service through server and storage virtualization.

Cisco Systems
As well as provide networking infrastructure equipment to service providers to build out cloud platforms, Cisco (CSCO) is also a SaaS provider through its $3.2 billion acquisition of WebEx in March 2007, and its $215 million purchase of PostPath in August 2008. The acquisitions are part of Cisco's Advanced Technologies division, which also houses cable set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta and Cisco's Linksys home networking unit.

For Cisco's fiscal second quarter results for 2010, Advanced Technology contributed 24.3 percent ($2.4 billion) of the company's total net sales of $9.8 billion. That share of the pie was slightly down from the 25.2 percent revenue share that Advanced Technology contributed in Q110. In comparision, Cisco's largest revenue-generating division in Q210 was Switches, which accounted for 34.9 percent ($3.4 billion) of revenue.

Oracle
The headlines that appeared after Oracle (ORCL) won European regulatory go-ahead to swallow Sun read as though Oracle wants nothing to do with cloud computing. While Oracle has stated that it does not plan to be in the rent-by-minute computer business, thus leaving Sun Cloud in the cold, Oracle is a SaaS provider. Among its products include Oracle CRM On Demand, and Oracle Beehive On Demand, a set of collaboration services. It also provides the Oracle Platform for SaaS, which includes the Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle VM, all aimed at ISVs to build SaaS and cloud-based applications.

In terms of financials, Oracle's On Demand portfolio stayed more or less level to contribute $188 million in revenue for its Q210, compared to $189 million in Q209. For its 2009 year end, On Demand contributed $779 million (a 12 percent increase from 2008) to Oracle's total revenue of $23.3 billion.