Monday Morning Impact – January 19
Omdia: Global cloud infrastructure spending hits $102.6 billion
Global spending on cloud infrastructure services reached $102.6 billion in Q3 2025, representing 25% year-on-year growth, according to research from London-based Omdia. Market momentum remained stable, marking the fifth consecutive quarter in which growth has remained above 20%, highlighting continued strength across the sector. This performance reflects a significant shift in the technology landscape as enterprise demand for AI moves beyond early experimentation toward scaled production deployment. As this transition accelerates, hyperscalers are increasingly redirecting competition away from the incremental gains in model performance and toward platform-level capabilities that support multi-model deployment and ensure the reliable operation of AI agents in real-world environments.
In Q3 2025, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud maintained their market rankings from the previous quarter, collectively accounting for 66% of global cloud infrastructure spending. Together, the three hyperscalers delivered 29% year-on-year growth.
AWS’s growth reaccelerated to 20% year on year quartering Q3 2025, marking its strongest performance since 2022. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud also maintained strong momentum, each delivering year-on-year growth of more than 35%. As enterprise demand for AI continues to materialize, growth in the cloud market is shifting from early-stage experimentation and pilot projects toward the scaled deployment of enterprise-grade AI applications. Backlog levels among leading cloud providers continued to rise, with AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud all reporting further increases in Q3 order backlogs, reinforcing the market’s underlying resilience and healthy demand environment.
Hyperscalers’ AI strategies are evolving from a primary focus on incremental model performance toward more platform-driven and production-ready approaches, according to the report. Enterprises are no longer evaluating AI platforms solely on model capabilities, but increasingly on their support for multi-model strategies and agent-based applications.
This shift is accelerating hyperscalers’ move toward platform-level AI capabilities. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are integrating proprietary foundation models with a growing range of third-party and open-weight models, leveraging managed AI platforms and services such as Amazon Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, and Vertex AI’s Model Garden to expand support for multi-model adoption.
“Collaboration across the ecosystem remains critical,” said Rachel Brindley, Senior Director at Omdia. “Multi-model support is increasingly viewed as a production requirement rather than a feature, as enterprises seek resilience, cost control, and deployment flexibility across generative AI workloads.”
Meanwhile, hyperscalers are stepping up investment in agent build-and-run capabilities, as real-world deployment continues to prove more complex than early experimentation suggested. “Many enterprises still lack standardized building blocks that can support business continuity, customer experience, and compliance at the same time, which is slowing the real-world deployment of AI agents,” said Yi Zhang, Senior Analyst at Omdia. “This is where hyperscalers are increasingly stepping in, using platform-led approaches to make it easier for enterprises to build and run agents in production environments.”
Channel Impact®
The data reinforce the trend toward cloud migration and the channel’s continuing business opportunity in assisting with the transitions.
Juniper Unveils Top 10 Emerging Tech Trends for 2026
The research arm of Juniper Networks has released its Top 10 Emerging Tech Trends report for 2026, revealing how frontier technologies such as post-quantum cryptography, neuromorphic computing, and physical AI are expected to shape enterprise strategy and investment over the coming year.
This year’s trends include (1) Post-quantum Cryptography: Standardization to Drive Hybrid Deployment Models; (2) Neuromorphic Computing: Commercial Chipsets That Address AI Bottlenecks to Launch in 2026; (3) Physical AI: Substantial Advances in Humanoid Robotics Expected in Next 3 Years; (4) Multi-agent Systems: Enterprises Invest in Domain-specific Agents; (5) Wireless EV Charging: Accelerated Infrastructure Rollouts Drive Mass Adoption; (6) Counter-drone Technology: Growing Threats Necessitate New Technologies; (7) Microfluidics to Receive Growing Interest as a Next-generation Cooling System for AI Chips; (8) Multi-cloud Models: 2025 Outages Bring Focus on More Resilience in 2026; (9) Small Modular Reactors: Regulatory Approvals Open Potential Disruptive Impact on Energy Generation; and (10) Open-source Smart Buildings: Interoperable Platforms Drive Market Growth Amidst Growing Energy Demand.
“Across security, compute, energy, and infrastructure, organizations are being forced to make real deployment decisions on technologies that were theoretical only a few years ago,” explained Molly Gatford, Senior Research Analyst at Juniper Research. “The challenge facing enterprises in 2026 will be how quickly they can adopt these technologies without increasing risk or complexity, and whether they have the organizational readiness to do so at scale.”
Channel Impact®
The whitepaper supports strategic planning across technology, infrastructure, and digital services, helping channel partners and other industry leaders focus on the developments that currently demand attention.
Pax8 Names New Chief Technology Officer
Pax8, a Denver-based company with a cloud commerce marketplace, has introduced Avery Moon as the company’s new chief technology officer. Moon will be responsible for accelerating the transformation of the technology company’s product-led vision into reality by defining and executing Pax8’s engineering vision and strategy. Moon will report to Pax8 CEO Scott Chasin.
“I am confident that Avery will imagine, innovate and deliver on the strategy we have set in motion as an AI-driven Marketplace that empowers small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs),” said Chasin. “Avery will be instrumental in evolving the Pax8 Marketplace into the new operating system for the intelligent SMB. His track record of success and leadership has proven he’s the perfect fit and will drive Pax8 to new levels of success globally.”
Prior to joining Pax8, Moon held senior engineering and science leadership roles that scaled companies from product-market fit through IPO or acquisition four times, grew revenue to over $1 billion twice, and built products now used by more than one billion customers globally. His experience spans prominent technology startups—including LinkedIn, Wealthfront, and Climate—as well as Fortune Global 500 companies such as Indeed and Bayer. He brings extensive global technology and team leadership experience, including building leading products for top GDP markets across the US, Germany, Japan, and India.
“Pax8’s vision for where the industry is headed, and a corresponding strategy to deliver scalable managed intelligence, inspires and energizes me. We are now at the productivity inflection point for AI, where intelligence is shifting from being embedded in tools to being delivered through autonomous, outcome-driven systems,” said Moon. “I’m thrilled to join Pax8 to continue the momentum and technical prowess built over the last decade to deliver the most effective and efficient infrastructure to empower SMBs and managed intelligence providers (MIPs).”
Moon graduated summa cum laude with honors from the University of Arizona with degrees in industrial and computational mathematics, economics, and business administration, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
Channel Impact®
Moon brings an extensive related background to his new role.
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