Cloud Market Will More Than Triple by 2014, Reaching $150 Billion

It promises to be a happy new year for the cloud computing industry. New research from Awesome Cloud Services testifies to the amazing rate at which cloud solutions are being adopted in business. The company finds that the overall cloud industry is expected to more than triple in value during a five-year span, from around $46 billion in 2008 to an expected $150 billion by 2014.

Awesome Cloud finds that by next year, 30 percent of global 1000 companies are expected to broker two or more cloud services for both internal and external users. That number represents a significant increase from current use of only five percent. Furthermore, the overall cloud computing growth rate is now five times more than the overall IT growth rate throughout the world, a significant statistic. With global public IT spending at more than $40 billion and expected to hit $100 billion by 2016, the promise for the cloud market is tremendous.

The U.S. is leading the market push, and 50 percent of cloud computing revenues are expected to come from the U.S. alone. When it comes to breaking down market share, infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is expected to grow rapidly, at a 41.7 percent CAGR from 2001 to 2016. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) office suites will undergo the same growth rate for that time period, with cloud storage coming in at 36.6 percent CAGR. SaaS-based digital content creation is expected to grow at 32.2 percent, while SaaS overall will grow at a steady 17.4 percent.

Other noteworthy forecasts include those related to virtualization, with 60 percent of server workload expected to be virtualized by next year, driven by cloud services adoption. In the customer relationship management (CRM) sector, 40 percent of systems sold throughout the world are now cloud-based.

In terms of overall market share, public cloud IT services will reign supreme, taking in an anticipated $100 billion by 2016. SaaS applications and services will follow at $67 billion, with enterprise cloud-based services coming in at $31.9 billion. Private cloud IT infrastructure will reach $22.2 billion by 2016, with public cloud IT infrastructure closely behind at $21.2 billion. Public cloud storage will round out the remainder of market share at $12.2 billion.