Businesses will spend a total of $112 billion on SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS over the next five years, as interest in cloud services booms, research firm Gartner predicts.
The firm estimates revenues from cloud services will grow 16.6% to $68.3 billion in 2010 alone, and continue growing to reach $148.8 billion in 2014, as companies look to cut the cost of their IT spending
"After many years of germination, most notably in the SaaS arena, the core ideas at the heart of cloud computing — such as pay for use, multi-tenancy and external services — appear to be resonating more strongly," said Ben Pring, research vice president at Gartner.
The greatest demand at present is from North America, which accounted for 60% of the global cloud services market in 2009, and is forecast to hold a 58% share in 2010.
Western Europe is forecast to account for 23.8% of the global market in 2010, followed by Japan on 10%.
While North America is tipped to maintain its leading position, Gartner predicts its share will fall to around 50% by 2014, as other countries grow their adoption of cloud services.
However, Pring says there is little evidence that new countries – in particular developing markets – will leapfrog established Western markets during the forecast period.
He also notes that many companies remain sceptical about the security of cloud computing and related products, and about service availability, and vendor viability.