Public cloud service adoption is already a mainstream phenomenon in most organizations. Meanwhile, many large enterprises see a private cloud in their future. But choosing whether to invest in building an internal cloud infrastructure or buy from a cloud service provider will become more challenging – in anticipation, savvy IT leaders are becoming brokers of dynamic business technology solutions.
Hybrid cloud resource management and progressive operational process adoption are the key focal points in preparation for this transition. Moreover, Line of Business demand for emerging use cases and just-in-time IT workload creation requires speedy access to a managed self-serve DevOps deployment model.
That’s why comprehensive management and provisioning tools — such as Red Hat CloudForms — have become essential platforms. Besides, given the pervasive trends in the marketplace, every business will eventually need an actionable hybrid cloud adoption plan. It’s a requirement of the forward-looking agile enterprise.
Public cloud services still gaining momentum
International Data Corporation (IDC) has released the latest results from their ongoing global market study. For 2013, the worldwide public cloud services market reached $45.7 billion — growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23 percent until 2018.
Three major product groups comprise the total public cloud services market in IDC’s software taxonomy: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).
The SaaS market – accounting for 72 percent of the total public cloud services market and forecast to grow at a 20 percent CAGR over the forecast period – is dominated by Enterprise Applications cloud solutions such as enterprise resource management (ERM) and customer relationship management (CRM), followed by Collaborative applications.
System Infrastructure Software cloud solutions – the other major part of the SaaS market, including Security, Systems Management, and Storage Management cloud services – drove 21 percent of the 2013 SaaS market.
The PaaS market – accounting for 14 percent of the market in 2013 with a forecast CAGR of 27 percent – is composed of a wide variety of highly strategic cloud app development, deployment, and management services.
In 2013 and 2014, PaaS spending has been largely driven by Integration and Process Automation solutions, Data Management solutions, and Application Server Middleware services.
The Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market – comprised of two major segments, Server and Basic Storage – drove $3.6 billion in 2013 spending and is projected to grow at a 31 percent CAGR through 2018.
On a regional basis, the United States holds almost 68 percent of the market which is much more than what it holds for traditional technologies. Western Europe holds 19 percent and the other six regions IDC tracks hold 5 percent or less each.
However, IDC forecasts that by 2018, the U.S. share will drop to 59 percent, while the Western European share will grow to 23 percent. Emerging regions are also expected to grow above worldwide average.
«We are at a pivotal time in the battle for leadership and innovation in the cloud. IDC’s Public Cloud Services Tracker shows very rapid growth in customer cloud service spending across 19 product categories and within eight geographic regions,» said Frank Gens, senior vice president at IDC.