Cloud and Managed Services Spending Forecast

Gartner recently shared their top technology predictions. They said that increased transparency -- and the need to drive business value -- are bringing disruptive change to IT organizations in 2011 and beyond. One of their key findings: cloud computing will enable many organizations to exploit internal capabilities to establish new business service revenue streams.

Other informed industry analysts share a similar point of view.

Businesses are increasingly moving their computing and collaboration applications to the cloud, and their shift in IT spending reflects that change in behavior. A recent market study by In-Stat forecasts cloud computing and managed hosting spending by U.S. businesses will surpass $13 billion in 2014, up from less than 3 billion today.

“Although spending across all sectors and size of business is projected to grow, there are some segments where growth will be staggering,” says Greg Potter, Research Analyst at In-Stat.

Apparently, based on In-Stat’s assessment, the professional services and healthcare verticals will see the largest growth in spending on cloud computing services -- increasing at a rate of over 124 percent between 2010 and 2014.

In-Stat’s market study findings include the following:

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) spending will increase 112 percent between 2010 and 2014.
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) spending will approach $4 billion in 2014.
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) spending will increase 113 percent to roughly $460 million in 2014.
• Small office/home office (SOHO) businesses are leading in the adoption of cloud computing services.