Workspace-as-a-Service: The emerging market is expected to be worth $1.7 billion in 2018

The next aaS in town is ‘Workspace-as-a-Service’! According to a recent report by Transparency Market Research, the global WaaS market was valued at $7,470.1 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.1 percent from 2015 to 2022. The WaaS market is classified on the basis of service type into desktop as a service (DaaS), application as a service (AaaS), system integration services, managed services, and consulting services. The DaaS segment is sub-segmented on the basis of deployment into distributed virtual desktop and centralized virtual desktop. [caption id=“attachment_2311762” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reuters[/caption] DaaS segment led the global WaaS market in 2014, accounting for around 40 percent of the total WaaS market revenue. However, with the increasing demand for application specific workspace virtualization solutions, AaaS segment is anticipated to witness fastest growth over the forecast period. “Deployment of WaaS solutions enables small and medium sized organisations to reduce the capital expenditure associated with the upgradation and migration of operating systems and applications. Due to this, rise in adoption of WaaS solutions has being observed across the small and medium size organisation in the last few years,” the research firm stated. In a report by IDC titled ‘Worldwide Workspace-as-a-Service 2014-2018 Forecast’, the market research firm revealed that the hosted WaaS market will grow from $282 million in 2013 to $1.7 billion in 2018, representing a five-year CAGR of 42.5 percent. Market research firm IDC defines Workspace-as-a-Service as “made up of two categories: desktop-as-a-service and desktop applications as a service. Desktop as a service is the (private or public) cloud delivery of a virtual desktop to an end user. This can be achieved by remotely accessing a centralized virtual desktop (aka VDI) or a virtual user session. Distributed virtual desktops are also included in this category. Desktop applications-as-a-service is the (private or public) cloud delivery of a desktop application, usually a native Windows application. This can be achieved using either virtual user session technology or application virtualization technology. The IDC report cites three primary drivers for WaaS adoption – growth in consumerization and BYOD; IT convergence, and cloud computing which enables end users to lower their overall spending on IT solutions. “The virtual client computing market is going to grow from $2.8 billion in 2013 to $4.7 billion in 2018, but up-front costs and complexity will drive organisations to look for an outsourced delivery model, driving the hosted market to $1.7 billion by 2018,” said Brett Waldman, research manager, Client Virtualization Software, IDC. “Despite many organisations looking to outsource virtual desktops today, the rise in mobility is actually transforming the demand as we speak, toward applications and data. It is this workspace that end users want to be able to access anywhere, anytime, anyplace — giving rise to what IDC defines as workspace as a service.”