The global public cloud services market is anticipated to rise 18.5% in 2013 to reach $131bn, according to a new report from Gartner.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which includes cloud compute, storage and print services was the fastest-growing segment of the market during the year, reporting a 42.4% rise to $6.1bn, and it is expected to rise by 47.3% in 2013 to $9bn.
According to the research firm, cloud advertising captured the highest market share in the broader cloud services market, with 48% share.
From 2013 to 2016, about $677bn is expected to be invested in cloud services globally, of which about $310bn will be spent on cloud advertising.
Gartner research director Ed Anderson said that the continued growth of the cloud services market will result from the adoption of cloud services for production systems and workloads, in addition to the development and testing scenarios that have led as the most prominent use case for public cloud services to date.
"Evidence of this growth is found in the increasing demand for cloud services from end-user organisations, met by an increased supply of cloud services from suppliers," Anderson said.
The cloud business process services segment (BPaaS), which is the second-largest market segment after cloud advertising, captured 28% market share in 2012, followed by cloud application services at 14.7%, infrastructure services (IaaS) at 5.5%, cloud management and security services at 2.8%, and cloud application infrastructure services capturing 1% of the market.
According to Gartner, the emerging markets in Asia/Pacific, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa demonstrate the highest growth rates, while they represent the smallest overall markets.
"Although forecast growth is generally high across all regions, the adoption of cloud services varies significantly by country. Providers should not assume that a generic strategy applied to specific countries or regions of the world will produce the same outcome when applied to other countries, even countries with similar market characteristics," Anderson said.
"Local economic factors, regulatory issues, the local political climate, the diverse landscape of global and local providers, including non-cloud providers, and other country-specific factors ensure a unique marketplace in each country and region."
North America is expected to account for 59% of all new spending on cloud services through 2016, followed by Western Europe with 24% of all new spending.
Additionally, emerging markets of Asia/Pacific, Greater China and Latin America are expected to report highest growth rates for cloud services through the period.
"IT services providers, particularly those focused on delivering cloud services offerings or related services, must consider these disproportionately large mature markets if they want to play a leading role in cloud services growth worldwide," Anderson said.
"Similarly, markets in Emerging Asia/Pacific, Greater China and Latin America should also be important considerations for IT services providers that want to capitalize on the high growth of these regions, particularly Latin America and Greater China."
