Global public cloud services market to reach US$204B in 2016: Gartner

The worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 16.5 per cent in 2016 to total US$204 billion, up from $175 billion in 2015, reports Gartner.

The highest growth will come from cloud system infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service [IaaS]), which is projected to grow 38.4 per cent in 2016.

Gartner says cloud advertising, the largest segment of the global cloud services market, is expected to grow 13.6 per cent in 2016 to reach $90.3 billion. Cloud advertising are cloud-based services that support the selection, transaction and delivery of advertising and ad-related data.

"The market for public cloud services is continuing to demonstrate high rates of growth across all markets and Gartner expects this to continue through 2017," says Sid Nag, research director at Gartner.

The IaaS segment will remain the fastest-growing segment in 2016, forecast to reach 22.4 billion.

"IaaS continues to be the strongest-growing segment as enterprises move away from datacentre build-outs and move their infrastructure needs to the public cloud," says Nag.

"Certain market leaders have built a significant lead in this segment, so providers should focus on creating differentiation for success."

Cloud application services (SaaS) is forecast to grow 20.3 per cent in 2016, to $37.7 billion. As software vendors shift their business models from on-premises licensed software to public cloud-based offerings, this trend will continue.

In addition, the entry of some major software vendors into the public cloud last year will fuel growth of the SaaS market moving forward, reports Nag.

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