Public Cloud Services Market Flirts with the Quarter-Billion-Dollar Mark

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Gartner just released its public cloud services market predictions today on the heels of IDC’s public cloud spending forecast. Although their figures differ, given their diverging focus and methodologies, they both agree that the cloud market has nowhere to go but up.

The worldwide public cloud services market will generate nearly $247 billion in revenue in 2017, an 18 percent increase compared to last year. By 2020, Gartner expects the market to reach $383 billion.

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Several segments make up the public cloud services market, including business process as a service (BPaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), cloud management and cloud advertising, according to the research firm. While they all have experienced brisk growth, a slowdown is on the horizon, said Gartner research director Sid Nag.

cloud computing

“The overall global public cloud market is entering a period of stabilization, with its growth rate peaking at 18 percent in 2017 and then tapering off over the next few years,” commented Nag in a Feb. 22 announcement. “While some organizations are still figuring out where cloud actually fits in their overall IT strategy, an effort to cost optimize and bring forth the path to transformation holds strong promise and results for IT outsourcing (ITO) buyers.”

Unsurprisingly, the cloud is having a major impact on business’ decisions to farm out their IT workloads. “Gartner predicts that through 2020, cloud adoption strategies will influence more than 50 percent of IT outsourcing deals,” Nag added.

IaaS will notch the biggest gains this year, growing 36.8 percent to hit $34.6 billion. The maturing SaaS segment will reach $46.3 billion, a 20.1-percent improvement.

As the industry makes strides in cloud-delivered customer relationship management (CRM) and human capital management (HCM) applications, demand will begin to wane and businesses shift to financial applications, Gartner predicted. Despite this, SaaS will remain near the top the heap after cloud advertising.

Earlier this week, IDC forecast that global public cloud spending would reach $122.5 billion this year, a 24.4-percent increase, before ballooning to $203 billion in 2020. Increased adoption among manufacturers and banks will help propel the market this year, said Eileen Smith, program director of Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC.

“In 2017, discrete manufacturing, professional services, and banking will lead the pack in global spending on public cloud services as they look for greater scalability, higher performance, and faster access to new technologies,” said Smith in a statement.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.