Gartner Predicts Huge Rise in Public Cloud Services Market

Research by Gartner has predicted that the worldwide public cloud services market is set to grow 16.5 percent in 2016 to total $204bn, up from $175bn in 2015.

The tech insight specialist reckons the highest growth in 2016 will come from cloud system infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service or IaaS), which is projected to grow 38.4 per cent this year.

Cloud advertising, the largest segment of the global cloud services market, is expected to grow 13.6 percent in 2016 to reach $90.3 billion.

Fastest growing

The IaaS segment is predicted to remain the fastest-growing in 2016, with forecasts suggesting the market will grow to reach $22.4bn. Cloud application services (SaaS) is forecast to grow 20.3 percent in 2016, to $37.7bn.

Gartner adds that, as software vendors shift their business models from on-premises licensed software to public cloud-based offerings, this trend will continue. In addition, the entry of some major software vendors into the public cloud last year will fuel growth of the SaaS market moving forward.

“The market for public cloud services is continuing to demonstrate high rates of growth across all markets and Gartner expects this to continue through 2017,” said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner. “This strong growth continues reflect a shift away from legacy IT services to cloud-based services, due to increased trend of organsations pursuing a digital business strategy.

 

“IaaS continues to be the strongest-growing segment as enterprises move away from data centre build-outs and move their infrastructure needs to the public cloud,” said Nag. “Certain market leaders have built a significant lead in this segment, so providers should focus on creating differentiation for success.”