Digital Lifescapes

For two decades, enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has been the dominant force reshaping how organizations consume business applications. Yet as artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities accelerate, a critical question emerges. Will AI apps render the SaaS model obsolete? The answer, as with most paradigm shifts, is far more nuanced than a simple yes or no. Enterprise SaaS isn't dying, but it's growing much older. And maturity, while a testament to success, brings its own set of challenges. Enterprise SaaS Market Development The U.S. enterprise software market is now highly saturated, and the momentum that once seemed unstoppable has definitively slowed. And yes, AI is a contributing factor. The B2B SaaS expansion era that defined the last decade, characterized by rising customer counts and reliable growth within existing accounts, has reached its natural limits. What's particularly telling is the shift in CIO priorities. While SaaS vendors were racing to expand their...

The business technology landscape is undergoing a continued shift in IT infrastructure. The public cloud, once a fringe player, has become the undisputed engine driving IT innovation and digital business growth. As executives grapple with their digital transformation initiatives, scalability, agility, and cost-efficiency remain paramount. The public cloud delivers on all these fronts, and Gartner's recent forecast underscores this reality. Worldwide public cloud end-user spending is projected to reach $675 billion in 2024, a significant increase from  $561 billion in 2023. This growth is driven by Generative AI (GenAI) and software application modernization. Public Cloud Computing Market Development Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This foundational layer, comprising compute, storage, and networking resources, is anticipated to reach $180 billion in 2024. This underscores the continued demand for core cloud infrastructure as organizations migrate workloads and application...

Most digital transformation is enabled by cloud solutions. Worldwide spending on public cloud services is forecast to reach $1.35 trillion in 2027, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Although annual spending growth is expected to slow slightly over the 2023-2027 forecast period, the market is forecast to achieve a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.9 percent. "Cloud now dominates tech spending across infrastructure, platforms, and applications," said Eileen Smith, vice president at IDC . Public Cloud Services Market Development IDC believes that most organizations have adopted the public cloud as a cost-effective platform for hosting enterprise applications, and for developing and deploying customer-facing solutions. Looking forward, the cloud computing model remains well positioned to serve customer needs for innovation in application development and deployment -- including as data, artificial intelligence ...

Global demand for public cloud computing services continue to grow. Worldwide revenue for the public cloud services market totaled $545.8 billion in 2022 -- that's an increase of 22.9 percent over 2021, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Software as a Service (SaaS) applications continued to be the largest source of public cloud services revenue by far, accounting for more than 45 percent of the total in 2022. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) was the second largest revenue category with 21.2 percent of the total, while Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service System Infrastructure Software (SaaS SIS) delivered 17 percent and 16.7 percent respectively. Public Cloud Services Market Development "Given the economic challenges of the past year, it's easy to conclude that we are in a period where a focus on constraining new expenditures and optimizing the use of existing cloud assets will dominate CIOs' pri...

Across the globe, many CEOs invested in initiatives to expand their digital offerings. User experience enhancements that are enabled by business technology were a priority in many industries. Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 21.7 percent to a total of $597.3 billion in 2023 -- that's up from $491 billion in 2022, according to the latest market study by Gartner. Cloud computing is driving the next phase of digital transformation, as organizations pursue disruption through technologies like generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), Web3, and enterprise Metaverse. Public Cloud Computing Market Development "Hyperscale cloud providers are driving the cloud agenda," said Sid Nag, vice president at Gartner . Organizations view cloud computing as a highly strategic platform for digital transformation initiatives, which requires providers to offer new capabilities as the competition for digital business escalates. "For example, generativ...

The senior executive's quest for meaningful and substantive digital business transformation in the Asia-Pacific region has gained new momentum in 2022. Expectations for digital business model growth are fueling the demand for innovation. Business leaders are considering the next advancement of cloud computing adoption in terms of technology and services to reap benefits beyond cost reduction and IT team productivity, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Multi-Cloud Market Development "With the multi-cloud environment becoming more manageable, organizations are loving the openness towards having workload portability and getting the best out of their cloud strategy without worrying about challenges of complexities, vendor lock-in, data privacy or governance," said Shahnawas Latiff, research manager at IDC . Organizations in the Asia-Pacific region are already experiencing a transformation from a technology and services implementation...

Cloud computing adoption continues to gain momentum across the globe. The public cloud services (PCS) market in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) will reach $165.2 billion in 2026, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). IDC expects the Asia-Pacific market to grow at a higher year-over-year (YoY) rate in 2022 at 31.4 percent, in comparison to 30 percent in 2021, as cloud migration continues to accelerate. However, IDC expects the YoY growth rates to slow down beginning from 2023 with a YoY growth of 28.3 percent to 22.4 percent in 2026. Asia-Pacific Cloud Services Market Development "Majority of organizations have pivoted rapidly toward a digital-centric modus operandi to adapt to new ways of operating, working, and selling products and services amid various disruptions," said Estelle Quek, senior research manager at IDC . These organizations demand better business outcomes from their adoption of digital technologies to increase efficiency, ...

Across European nations, more CIOs and CTOs are investing in public cloud services that become the essential foundation for the design and delivery of innovative digital transformation projects. Public cloud computing spending in Europe will reach $113 billion in 2022 and will double to $239 billion by 2026, growing at a 22 percent 5-year CAGR, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Investments in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will continue to lead most of the spending in Public Cloud in Europe in 2022, but Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) will be the fastest-growing segment. In fact, PaaS enables digital business deployment via the quick testing and production of new software applications. Public Cloud Market Development Professional services, banking, and discrete manufacturing will be among the top spenders in public cloud services, absorbing almost 60 percent of the overall public cloud services spend in 2022.  Human-centric industries are adju...

As more enterprise CIOs and CTOs transition to the cloud, the opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs) expanded. At the same time, the managed cloud services market has become more complex as organizations increasingly look to their service providers for superior solutions and business technology leadership. A worldwide survey by International Data Corporation (IDC) examined the service and business requirements that MSPs and their ecosystem partners need to optimize their growth opportunities and drive competitive advantage in the market for managed cloud services. Managed Cloud Services Market Development Due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders utilize public cloud capabilities (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), innovative technologies and processes (IoT, edge computing, blockchain), and multi-cloud management platforms for their growth strategies and to ensure business resiliency. While very few organizations have shifted all of their IT applications and infrastructure to the cloud...

The large enterprise quest to shift more IT workloads to hyperscale cloud service providers was pursued with the expectation of streamlining business processes for new digital transformation projects. While there are benefits to adopting public cloud services, there remain inherent IT management complexities. The global public cloud services market includes a broad mix of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), System Infrastructure Software as a Service (SISaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), which grew by 24.1 percent year-over-year in 2020 with revenues totaling $312 billion, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Spending continued to consolidate in 2020 with the combined revenue of the top 5 public cloud service providers capturing ~38 percent of the worldwide total, and it's growing 32 percent year-over-year. Due to an expanding portfolio of SaaS and SISaaS offerings, Microsoft now shares the top p...

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the Digital Transformation trends. Savvy CIOs and CTOs that were an early adopter of public cloud computing technologies now have a significant strategic market lead over their competitors. Moreover, a few dominant IT platform providers continue to benefit from this trend. The worldwide public cloud services market -- including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) -- grew by 26 percent year-over-year in 2019 with revenues totaling $233.4 billion, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Spending continued to consolidate with the combined revenue of the top five global public cloud service providers -- Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Google, and Oracle -- capturing more than one third of the worldwide total and growing at 35 percent year-over-year. Public Cloud Services Market Development "Cloud is expanding far beyond niche e-comm...

As more devices are connected to the public internet, mass quantities of data are being produced. Capitalizing on those data assets, expansion in the advanced analytics market has been enabled by new technology, products, and related services.  The inherent value of data is increasing, and that value is stimulating the Internet of Things (IoT) advanced analytics market, with the emergence of accessible out-of-the-box and off-the-shelf machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Vendors are now easing access to ML and AI toolsets by expanding availability through deployment options that include edge computing, on-premises infrastructure, private cloud, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).   IoT ML and AI Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, the IoT ML and AI market will reach $1.09 billion in 2020 and grow to reach $10.6 billion by 2026. Edge ML/AI is more prevalent in manufacturing...

The pace of cloud computing adoption will accelerate as more organizations explore hybrid IT strategies. CIOs and CTOs will fine-tune the mix of on-premises and managed cloud services for their user's varied applications and workloads. Worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will more than double over the 2019-2023 forecast period, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). With a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.3 percent, public cloud spending is forecast to grow from $229 billion in 2019 to reach nearly $500 billion in 2023. Public Cloud Service Market Development "Adoption of public (shared) cloud services continues to grow rapidly as enterprises, especially in professional services, telecommunications, and retail, continue to shift from traditional application software to software as a service (SaaS) and from traditional infrastructure to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to empower custo...

Leading hyperscale cloud service providers continue to disrupt the traditional IT infrastructure vendor landscape, as more enterprise CIOs and CTOs expand their adoption of multi-cloud strategies that marginalize the remaining applications for on-premises data centers. Legacy IT vendors that were reluctant to evolve their business model will now seek niche cloud market segments where they can differentiate their offerings. There's no viable growth path that's based upon hardware or software market status-quo assumptions. However, distinctive professional services are still a source of new opportunities. Cloud Computing Market Development The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 17.5 percent in 2019 to total $214.3 billion -- that's up from $182.4 billion in 2018, according to the latest global market study by Gartner. The fastest-growing market segment will be cloud system infrastructure services, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which i...

Why do most internet of things (IoT) analytics operations occur in the cloud? The public cloud offers a centralized location for large amounts of affordable storage and computing power. But there are many instances in which it makes more sense to perform analytics closer to the thing or activity that is generating or collecting data ­– equipment deployed at customer sites. This is particularly true in industrial and manufacturing environments, which are familiar with the challenges of managing massive amounts of unstructured data, but may lag when it comes to the virtualization of IT infrastructure. Industrial Cloud Market Development Advances in intelligent process manufacturing, factory automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning models all benefit from edge analytics implementations, yet will likely become islands of automation without a cohesive industrial cloud computing platform. The industrial cloud covers everything from the factory floor to the industrial ...

Around the globe, CIOs and CTOs continue to transition to a hybrid multi-cloud service delivery model, supported by on- and off-premises IT infrastructure. Meanwhile, the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 21.4 percent in 2018 to reach $186.4 billion -- that's up from $153.5 billion in 2017. The fastest-growing segment of the market is cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which is forecast to grow 35.9 percent in 2018 to reach $40.8 billion, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. Public Cloud Market Development Moreover, Gartner expects the top ten cloud service providers to account for nearly 70 percent of the IaaS market by 2021 -- that's up from 50 percent in 2016. "The increasing dominance of the hyperscale IaaS providers creates both enormous opportunities and challenges for end-users and other market participants," said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner . According to the Gartner assessment, while p...

Cloud service adoption continues to grow, as traditional IT vendors react to market demand. Total spending on IT infrastructure products for deployment in cloud environments is forecast to reach $52.3 billion in 2018 -- that's year-over-year growth of 10.9 percent, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Public cloud data centers will account for a majority of this spending, 65.9 percent, growing at the fastest annual rate of 11.3 percent. Off-premises private cloud environments will represent 13 percent of cloud IT infrastructure spending, growing at 12 percent year over year. On-premises private clouds will account for 61.7 percent of spending on private cloud IT infrastructure and will grow 9.1 percent year-over-year in 2018. Cloud IT Infrastructure Market Development "Growing expansion of digital transformation initiatives enables further adoption of cloud-based solutions around the globe. This will result in a contin...

If you're a CTO or CIO that has escalated your organization's move to the cloud, then clearly you're not alone. Worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure is forecast to reach $160 billion in 2018 -- that's an increase of 23.2 percent over 2017, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Although annual spending growth is expected to slow somewhat over the 2016-2021 forecast period, the market is forecast to achieve a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.9 percent with public cloud services spending totaling $277 billion in 2021. Public Cloud Services Market Development The industries that are forecast to spend the most on public cloud services in 2018 are discrete manufacturing ($19.7 billion), professional services ($18.1 billion), and banking ($16.7 billion). The process manufacturing and retail industries are also expected to spend more than $10 billion each on public cloud services in 2018. ...

Why are savvy CIOs and CTOs so focused on Hybrid IT infrastructure solutions? More enterprises are moving to hybrid and multi-cloud environments. According to the latest worldwide market study by 451 Research, the cloud services market will reach $53.3 billion in 2021, that up from $28.1 billion this year. The latest global survey found that cloud service adoption is now mainstream, with 90 percent of organizations surveyed using some type of cloud service. Moreover, analysts expect 60 percent of workloads to be running in some form of hosted cloud service by 2019 -- that's up from 45 percent today. Cloud Services Market Development This represents an ongoing pivot from DIY owned and operated on-premises IT, to a combination that includes cloud or hosted third-party IT services. 451 Research finds that the future of IT is multi-cloud and hybrid with 69 percent of survey respondents planning to have some type of diverse environment by 2019. That being said, the growth in mul...

The ongoing shift to cloud computing continues across the globe. The worldwide public cloud services market grew 28.6 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2017 (1H17) with revenues totaling $63.2 billion, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). "Public cloud adoption is accelerating in large part as enterprises recognize that the cloud has become the launchpad for virtually every new IT innovation in the last 24 months -- including AI, blockchain, quantum computing and more," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC . Public Cloud Market Development While stronger than expected growth was seen across all regions, Asia-Pacific saw the highest regional growth at 38.9 percent and this market now represents 11.5 percent of all public cloud services revenues. Strong public cloud spending in China, which saw 55.6 percent year-over-year growth in the first half of 2017, is a key driver. Among the three prima...