Analysys Mason has published the ?Enterprise Cloud Services: Worldwide Forecast 2012-2017? report.

The firm says that the global market for enterprise cloud-based services will grow from $18.3 billion in 2012 to $31.9 billion in 2017. The year-on-year growth rate will be 17 per cent in 2013, but will decrease during the next five years as the size of the cloud services market increases overall.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) accounted for 66 per cent of revenues in 2012, while 33 per cent was related to infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). This revenue split will change during the next five years, as the share of revenue from IaaS increases to 43 per cent by 2017.

Meanwhile, the enterprise public cloud services market continues to grow, but at a slower overall rate than in the firm?s previous forecast, particularly in developed countries.

In developed countries, revenue from enterprise cloud services will increase from $17 billion in 2012 to $28.7 billion in 2017, at a CAGR of 11 per cent. In emerging markets, revenue from such services will remain far smaller, increasing from $1.2 billion in 2012 to $3.2 billion in 2017, at a CAGR of 20.9 per cent. The share of worldwide enterprise public cloud services revenue generated from emerging markets will be slightly above 10 per cent by 2017, a 7 per cent increase over 2012.

Also, communications service providers (CSPs) will account for an increasing share of enterprise cloud services sales as they bundle more offerings with core connectivity. CSPs will become more adept at offering a high-quality cloud solution with network- and application-level SLAs, which will drive more enterprises to adopt cloud services. CSPs will be responsible for 18 per cent of total worldwide enterprise cloud services revenue by 2017. CSPs will account for 12 per cent of worldwide revenue from enterprise cloud services in 2012, a 14 per cent decrease from the company?s previous forecast, as CSPs continue to position themselves as ICT providers rather than communications providers to large enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

SMEs, or enterprises with between 1 and 249 employees, contributed to 43 per cent of the total public cloud services revenues by end-2012. SMEs often have fewer security-related concerns than large enterprises when adopting cloud services, but are slower overall to adopt new technology solutions. The firm expects the proportion of revenue from SMEs to increase to 49 per cent by 2017, owing to:

  • SME?s awareness of public cloud solutions will continue to increase
  • The usability of SME cloud services will continue to increase as vendors and CSPs create affordable, easy-to-use solutions
  • CSPs will continue to add solutions to their portfolios that are targeted towards SMEs.