According to Juniper Research, revenues generated from enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) are forecast to grow from $23.2 billion in 2013 to $53.5 billion in 2018, representing 59 per cent share of the enterprise public cloud computing market.
Further, the research firm states that for the next few years, SaaS will remain the dominant cloud model. This is due in part to the relative maturity and widespread acceptance of the SaaS model, as well as recognition of the comparative benefits and risks of commissioning cloud-based software.
While, SaaS will continue to grow in popularity, Juniper Research points out that enterprise take-up of platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) products has not been encouraging. The adoption of PaaS and IaaS has been adversely impacted due to concerns regarding data security, compliance and portability.
Challenges notwithstanding, the research firm expects both PaaS and IaaS to witness significant growth over the forecast period. Over the next few years, new applications being developed particularly for the cloud to leverage big data analytics will drive the demand for PaaS and IaaS.
The research firm underlines that with an aim to promote widespread usage of PaaS among enterprises, service providers are increasingly providing multi-lingual support and improving portability through initiatives such as Cloud Foundry (an open source cloud computing platform as a service). Going forward, small-to-medium-sized businesses are expected to adopt IaaS as the platform offers them a high level of control over the software stack and security implementation.
