IDC: Cloud Services Entering Innovation Stage
IDC is a leader in information technology research. IDC’s latest forecast has public cloud computing growing at 600% rate when compared to the rest of the IT market. The public cloud is changing the way businesses operate and cloud is rapidly maturing as IDC notes that cloud is entering an innovation stage that will shape the future of the market.
IDC attributes the sharp uptick in cloud services to the major shift to Cloud First initiatives, including the US Federal Government own Cloud First agenda. The US Government, much like local, state and even other nation-states have become the biggest customers of cloud. It was recently estimated that US Government’s migration to cloud has saved the government over $20 billion so far. Other industries have also rapidly adapted public cloud solutions.
Frank Gens is the Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC and in the most recent IDC press release, Gens mentions, “Over the next four to five years, IDC expects the community of developers to triple and to create a ten-fold increase in the number of new cloud-based solutions.” Gens adds, “Many of these solutions will become more strategic than traditional IT has ever been. At the same time, there will be unprecedented competition and consolidation among the leading cloud providers. This combination of explosive innovation and intense competition will make the next several years a pivotal period for current and aspiring IT market leaders.”
The release goes on to quote some stark numbers such as public IT cloud representing 70% of the total expenditures spent on cloud in 2014. IDC goes on to note that the biggest need for cloud is at the application level, which means public IaaS providers stand the most to gain from organizations wanting to launch and scale their application in the cloud. The report concludes by saying, “The second largest public IT cloud services category will be infrastructure as a service (IaaS), boosted by cloud storage’s 31% CAGR over the forecast period. Platform as a service (PaaS) and cloud storage services will be the fastest growing categories, driven by major upticks in developer cloud services adoption and big data-driven solutions, respectively.”
