Amazon Says One Million Customers Actively Use Its Cloud Services

During Amazon’s fourth quarter earnings announcement today, the company revealed that Amazon Web Services (AWS)—essentially its cloud computing infrastructure—has over one million active customers.
Amazon Senior Vice President Andy Jassy.
Amazon Senior Vice President Andy Jassy.Richard Brian/Reuters/Corbis

Amazon says its pioneering cloud computing services are actively used by over one million customers.

The tech giant revealed the number day, during its fourth quarter earnings announcement. Each of those one million customers have used its cloud services during a recent one month period, the company said, and usage grew close to 90 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same quarter the year before.

The company still has not provided specific revenues for its cloud offerings, known collectively as Amazon Web Services, but it promised to reveal these numbers during its next earnings call.

Amazon Web Services provide a wide range of online tools that businesses and independent developers use to build and operate all sorts software, from web sites to data analysis tools to email systems. Basically, with these online services, people and companies can build stuff without setting up their own hardware tools.

Amazon pioneered this new breed of on-demand online computing about ten years ago, and though it now faces steep competition from Microsoft, Google, and others, it seems to dominate the market.

Now, we had least have some indication from Amazon about the size of its business. Previously, we've had to rely on studies from outside analysts. According to research firm DeepField, Amazon cloud services, at one point, could touches about one percent of all of the internet traffic in North America---an enormous amount.