Amazon, Microsoft cloud-computing can weather a recession and coronavirus, analysts say

In the decade since the Great Recession, cloud computing became the de facto information-technology strategy for startup companies and, increasingly, large corporations alike. The business of renting remote computing power has grown into an enormous industry and, with No. 1 player Amazon and No. 2 Microsoft based in the Seattle area, a mainstay of the region’s broader tech-driven economy.As fears of a recession mount with the spread of the novel coronavirus, cloud analysts are considering how this $263 billion industry would fare in its first significant economic downturn since reaching maturity. The short answer: fairly well, especially for the market leaders.Among the digital giants, nobody’s scaling back for a blip, said John-David Lovelock, chief forecaster with research and advisory firm Gartner, which expects global public cloud-services revenue to increase 33% to more than $350 billion by 2022.You don’t build a cloud provider of the scale we’re talking about here without a plan to do it that spans decades, said Corey Quinn, cloud economist with The Duckbill Group.It transcends the boundaries of any individual economic cycle.