Worldwide public cloud services revenue reached a total of $45.7 billion in 2013, and IDC expects this market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% through 2018. Public cloud services spending has been mainly driven by enterprise applications solutions, such as enterprise resource management (ERM) and customer relationship management (CRM), followed by collaborative applications.
Two product groups comprise the total public cloud services market in IDC‘s software taxonomy: Cloud Software and Cloud Infrastructure. Cloud Software spending represented almost 86% of the total public cloud services market in 2013 while Cloud Infrastructure held the remaining 14%. The Cloud Software market includes two product categories: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
SaaS and PaaS
The SaaS category has been mainly driven by enterprise applications solutions, such as ERM and CRM, followed by collaborative applications. Holding a smaller share of the SaaS category are System Infrastructure Software solutions, such as Security and Storage software. From a competitive perspective, the SaaS service provider ecosystem is largely led by Salesforce.com followed by ADP and Intuit. Traditional software vendors like Oracle and Microsoft hold the 4th and 5th position respectively.
The PaaS market has been largely driven by Integration and Process Automation solutions, Structured Data Management solutions, and Application Server Middleware. The competitive market is led by Amazon.com, followed by Salesforce.com and Microsoft tied for the number 2 position. GXS and Google hold the 4th and 5th positions, respectively.
IaaS
The Cloud Infrastructure product group is comprised by only one product category: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), which at the same time is comprised by two markets, Server and Basic Storage. The top 5 vendors in this market are Amazon.com, which holds the first position with more than 40% of market share, followed by RackSpace, IBM, CenturyLink, and Microsoft.
On a regional basis, the United States holds almost 68% of the market, which is much more than what it holds for traditional technologies. Western Europe holds 19% and the rest of the regions hold 5% or less each. By 2018, IDC forecasts that the U.S. share will drop to 59% while Western Europe will grow to 23% of market share. Emerging regions are also expected to grow above worldwide average.
More details of this study can be found in IDC’s Worldwide Semi-annual Public Cloud Services Tracker. The study provides total market size and service provider share for the 19 segments of the global public cloud market. The Tracker covers the top 80 public cloud services providers across a total of eight regional markets. Historical market size, service provider share, and forecasts are updated on a semiannual basis.
