Cloud computing is set to "reshape" the IT landscape over the next 5 years, as spending on public IT cloud services remains on track to hit $72.9 billion by 2015.
"Cloud services are interconnected with and accelerated by other disruptive technologies, including mobile devices, wireless networks, big data analytics, and social networking," explained IDC chief analyst Frank Gens.
"Together, these technologies are merging into the industry's third major platform for long-term growth. As during the mainframe and PC eras, the new platform promises to radically expand the users and uses of information technology, leading to a wide and entirely new variety of intelligent industry solutions."
According to Gens, as a critical component to the third platform, cloud services represent a strategic growth area for virtually all IT vendors.
"With spending for public IT cloud services growing at more than four times the rate of the worldwide IT market as whole, IDC expects one of every seven dollars spent on packaged software, servers, and storage offerings in 2015 will be related to the public cloud model," he said.
"Moreover, the winners of the cloud platform wars will likely be the new power brokers of the IT industry."
Additional IDC projections include:
- By 2015, public cloud services will account for 46% of net new growth in overall IT spending in five key product categories - applications, app development and deployment, systems infrastructure software, basic storage and servers.
- Software-oriented cloud services (SaaS) is expected to comprise roughly three quarters of all spending on public cloud IT services throughout the forecast.
- Spending on hardware-oriented cloud services (servers and storage) will be largely driven by SaaS providers building out their infrastructure.
- The United States will dominate overall spending throughout the forecast period, with nearly 50% of all public IT cloud services revenues coming from the U.S. in 2015. Nevertheless, regions outside the U.S. are likely to show much stronger growth as cloud services adoption accelerates.
