A roundup of cloud computing forecasts and market estimates for 2015

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Global SaaS software revenues are forecasted to reach $106B in 2016, increasing 21% over projected 2015 spending levels. A Goldman Sachs study published earlier this year projects that spending on cloud computing infrastructure and platforms will grow at a 30% CAGR from 2013 through 2018 compared with 5% growth for the overall enterprise IT.

Centaur Partners and other firms mentioned in this roundup are seeing more enterprise-size deals for cloud computing infrastructure and applications. While each of these consultancies and research firms have varying forecasts for the next few years, all agree that cloud computing adoption is accelerating in enterprises on a global scale.

Key take-aways from the roundup are provided below:

  • By 2018, 59% of the total cloud workloads will be Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) workloads, up from 41% in 2013.  Cisco is predicting that by 2018, 28% of the total cloud workloads will be Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) workloads down from 44% in 2013. 13% of the total cloud workloads will be Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) workloads in 2018, down from 15% in 2013.  The following graphic provides a comparative analysis of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS forecasts from 2013 to 2018. Source:  Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2013–2018. (PDF, free, no opt-in).

Image Cisco SaaS IaaS PaasS Results

  • Centaur Partners’ analysis of SaaS & cloud-based business application services revenue forecasts the market growing from $13.5B in 2011 to $32.8B in 2016, attaining a 19.5% CAGR. Centaur provides a useful overview of current market conditions including M&A activity in their latest market overview published this month, Introduction to Centaur Partners: SaaS Market Overview, (PDF, free, no opt-in).

centaur partners forecast

Top Five Tech Spending Increases

  • Global SaaS software revenues are forecasted to reach $106B in 2016, increasing 21% over projected 2015 spending levels.  Spending on integration, storage management, and database management systems are projected to experience the greatest growth in 2015. These and other key insights are from Forrester’s SaaS software subscription revenue by category show below.  Source: Enterprise software spend to reach $620 billion in 2015: Forrester.

Global SaaS Forecast Forrester

  • $78.43B in SaaS revenue will be generated in 2015, increasing to $132.57 in 2020, attaining a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.14%.  The following graphic and table provides an overview of Forrester’s Global Public Cloud Computing market size analysis and forecast for the years 2011 to 2020. Source: Institut Sage. 

Global Forecast Public Cloud Forrester

Goldman Cloud TAM

Goldman Cloud Disrupting Traditional IT

SMAC Areas

  • IDC predicts that by 2016, there will be an 11% shift of IT budget away from traditional in-house IT delivery, toward various versions of cloud computing as a new delivery model.  By 2017, 35% of new applications will use cloud-enabled, continuous delivery and enabled by faster DevOps life cycles to streamline rollout of new features and business innovation. Source: 2015-2017 Forecast: Cloud Computing to Skyrocket, Rule IT Delivery.
  • By 2018, IDC forecasts that public cloud spending will more than double to $127.5 billion. This forecast is broken down as follows: $82.7 billion in SaaS spending, $24.6 billion for IaaS and $20.3 billion in PaaS expenditures.  Source: Forecasts Call For Cloud Burst Through 2018.
  • By 2016 over 80% of enterprises globally will using IaaS, with investments in private cloud computing showing the greater growth. Ovum forecasts that by 2016, 75% of EMEA-based enterprises will be using IaaS.  These and other insights are from the presentation, The Role of Cloud in IT Modernisation: The DevOps Challenge (free PDF, no opt in). The graphic below provides an analysis of cloud computing adoption in EMEA and globally.

Ovum Cloud Adoption Forecast

SaaS for SCM

Enterprise cloud revenues

  • By 2018, more than 60% of enterprises will have at least half of their infrastructure on cloud-based platforms.  These and other are insights are from the keynote Cloud Business Summit presentation Digital Business, Rethinking Fundamentals by Bill McNee, Founder and CEO, Saugatuck Technology.  Source: Digital Business, Rethinking Fundamentals.

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