Slower cloud spending by inflation-hit businesses is expected to stall the sales momentum at Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. and add to the troubles of the sector that laid off thousands this month.
After years of blistering growth, most recently fueled by remote working and studying during the pandemic, cloud demand has cooled in the past nine months and sales growth may slow further, analysts said.
End-user cloud spending for services including those from the world’s largest providers—Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure—is expected to grow 20.7 percent this year after 18.8 percent growth in 2022 and 52.8 percent in 2021, according to research firm Gartner….