Public cloud market set for 'hypergrowth': CIOs, it's time to take control

The global public cloud market is expected to hit $191 billion by 2020, according to a report released by Forrester Research. That’s a 20 percent jump from Forrester’s last forecast, which was released in April, 2011, that predicted the market would be $160 billion by 2020. In 2013, the market stood at $58 billion.

The public cloud market is set for “hypergrowth,” Forrester analyst James Staten wrote in his blogpost. “Strong growth and maturity over the past three years since our last forecast has put fuel in its tank which will push this market to $191 billion by 2020.”
[caption id=“attachment_77193” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image: Thinkstock[/caption]
“While the last several years can best be characterised as exploratory for most enterprises, cloud services and cloud platforms are now an undeniable part of the IT landscape. And based on Forrester enterprise CIO inquiries, the shift has begun from exploration of cloud as a potential option, to rationalisation of cloud services within the overall IT portfolio. And this shift to the second stage of technology adoption yields significantly higher market revenues than the exploratory phase,” he continues.

The bulk of this market’s revenues come from software-as-a-service (SaaS) that accounted for $36 billion in revenue in 2013 and is expected to hit $131 billion by 2020. In addition, the global public cloud platform services will hit $44 billion by 2020 and the cloud business services should reach $14 billion, according to the report.

More from Biztech

Future Group - Reliance Retail Deal approved by CCI RBI ban on cryptocurrencies takes effect; prohibition could force investors to tap the black market

Much of this growth is initiated by line of business and marketing and strategy leads, but CIOs and their technology management organisations are increasingly expected to be driving these initiatives. For CIOs, the message is clear: “Shift into the driver seat, or others will.”

Public cloud platforms will rival traditional infrastructure deployments by 2020. And as the seismic shift in application portfolios progresses, public clouds will capture a significantly larger addressable market, said Staten As such, CIOs should start considering clouds as a core deployment option within their formal budgets.

“Still, inertia is difficult to overcome in the enterprise market, and there remain legitimate concerns about the security and performance of cloud solutions in certain parts of the world and for certain use cases and data types. As the past three years have shown, these will be overcome. The CIO’s biggest battle will be the internal cultural, psychological and financial accounting barriers born in a different age that will take decades to change,” Staten said.