Cloud Computing Services Market To Near $150 Billion In 2014

That massive boom in the cloud computing services market comes as cloud services are expected to hit $68.3 billion this year, a dramatic 16.6 percent rise compared to 2009 cloud services revenue, which was $58.6 billion.

"We are seeing an acceleration of adoption of cloud computing and cloud services among enterprises and an explosion of supply-side activity as technology providers maneuver to exploit the growing commercial opportunity," Ben Pring, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement. "The scale of application deployments is growing; multi-thousand-seat deals are increasingly common. IT managers are thinking strategically about cloud service deployments; more-progressive enterprises are thinking through what their IT operations will look like in a world of increasing cloud service leverage. This was highly unusual a year ago."

Meanwhile, as cloud computing services continue to explode, Gartner predicts that enterprises will pony up $112 billion cumulatively on software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) combined over the course of the next five years, further generating opportunities for solution providers looking to strike while the cloud computing iron is hot.

"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," Pring added. "In part, this can be explained by macroeconomic factors. The financial turbulence of the last 18 months has meant every organization has been scrutinizing every expenditure. An IT solution that can deliver functionality less expensively and with more agility (remembering that time is money) is hard to ignore against this backdrop."

Gartner is also seeing increased and accelerated adoption of cloud computing and cloud computing services among enterprises as a means for cutting IT management headaches.

Currently, the U.S. is leading the charge for cloud computing services. The U.S. had 60 percent of the cloud computing services market last year and will be at 58 percent in 2010, Gartner said. However, the U.S. market share of the cloud computing market will drop to 50 percent by 2014 as more countries embrace cloud services. For example, Western Europe is expected to represent 23.8 percent of the cloud services market this year, while Japan will account for 10 percent. Come 2014, the U.K. will make up 29 percent of the cloud services market and Japan will represent 12 percent of cloud services revenue.

Despite the obvious increased interest in cloud computing, enterprises still have concerns, with security chief among them, followed closely by availability of service, vendor viability and technology maturity.

"Many enterprises may be examining cloud computing and cloud services, but are far from convinced that it is appropriate for their requirements," Pring wrote. "We expect that this will be a significant opportunity for existing IT services players to evolve their current offerings -- such as outsourcing, system integration, development, etc. -- to become cloud-enabled and try to combine the best of the two worlds, namely traditional IT services and cloud computing."