Amazon’s cloud growth rate continued to climb in the second quarter of 2021, indicating a potential ongoing upward trend for the world’s largest hyperscaler. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) sales jumped 37% year over year to $14.8 billion, and its operating income increased 25% during the same period to $4.19 billion. Overall, AWS contributed 13% of Amazon’s total revenue and almost 54% of its profit during the quarter. 

"AWS has helped so many businesses and governments maintain business continuity, and we’ve seen AWS growth reaccelerate as more companies bring forward plans to transform their businesses and move to the cloud,” CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement.

Jassy took over Amazon as CEO earlier this month following the departure of founder Jeff Bezos, who is now executive chair, and hired Adam Selipsky to return to the company as AWS CEO. 

“Andy has hit the ground running,” CFO Brian Olsavsky said during the earnings call. “Expect Andy to add his unique brand of positive attitude and optimism, and forward-looking focus to help Amazon keep going and delighting customers.”

Jassy was not on the call.

“AWS revenue growth accelerated across a broad range of customers. We see strong growth in enterprises, governments, educational and research institutions, and our startup and digital-native customers,” Olsavsky said.

AWS’ growth rate began to stabilize around 28% to 29% in late 2019, and leading into the COVID-19 crisis, but it’s been roaring back thus far in 2021, and grew 32% in the previous quarter. Olsavsky suggested this trend could continue. 

“In the medium and long term, disruptive economic events like COVID have caused many people to step back and think about how they want to change strategically, and many have come to the conclusion that they do not want to own and run their own data centers,” he said. 

Olsavsky also noted that many companies decreased their use of AWS during the height of the pandemic amid uncertain demand curves that impacted some industries worse than others. 

Despite the growth spurt, AWS still compares unfavorably to cloud revenue growth rates of its largest competitors. However, on a holistic basis, AWS commands sweeping control of the market and generates significantly more revenue from the cloud than any other company.

Microsoft Azure public cloud revenue grew 51% year over year during the quarter, and Google Cloud revenue increased 54% to $4.62 billion during the same period. Microsoft doesn’t disclose its public cloud revenue in dollars.

AWS benefits from 15 years of development, scale, and experience, Olsavsky said. “If you look at the last quarter, AWS added more revenue quarter over quarter and year over year than any quarter in our history. We’re now a $59 billion annualized run rate business, and that's up from $43 billion at this time last year.”

Amazon banked $7.8 billion in net income on $113.1 billion in revenue, marking a 27% year-over-year increase in sales and a 50% jump in profit.