Public cloud services market to reach $208.6 billion in 2016

Both businesses and consumers have embraced the cloud and Gartner projects that the worldwide public cloud services market will grow by 17.2 percent by the end of this year.

In 2015, the public cloud services market was worth $178 billion. Gartner's projection that it will grow by 17.2 percent in 2016 will bring that number up to $208.6 billion, which is a testament to the way in which the cloud has matured and won over businesses and consumers.

The area that will see the highest growth is cloud system infrastructure service which is projected to grow by 42.8 percent in 2016. Cloud application services (SaaS) will see the second strongest growth rate at 21.7 percent which will see it reach $38.9 billion in 2016.

Sid Nag, research director at Gartner, highlighted the way in which moving to the cloud is saving organizations money though not all are keen on adopting cloud services: "Growth of public cloud is supported by the fact that organizations are saving 14 percent of their budgets as an outcome of public cloud adoption, according to Gartner's 2015 cloud adoption survey. However, the aspiration for using cloud services outpaces actual adoption. There's no question there is great appetite within organizations to use cloud services, but there are still challenges for organizations as they make the move to the cloud. Even with the high rate of predicted growth, a large number of organizations still have no current plans to use cloud services".

Public cloud adoption is being spurred on by IT modernization, which is the current top driver behind businesses moving to the cloud followed by cost savings, innovation and agility. Through this adoption, a more modern IT environment is emerging that could help serve as a strategic foundation for digital business processes and future applications.

The top inhibitor to public cloud adoption is still security and privacy concerns. This is despite the fact that leading cloud providers have displayed a strong security track record and have been increasingly transparent.

Ed Anderson, research vice president at Gartner explained the firm's position on cloud security, saying: "Gartner's position on cloud security has been clear -- public cloud services offered by the leading cloud providers are secure. The real security challenge is using public cloud services in a secure manner. More education is needed to help organizations overcome the hype associated with security concerns. This should be a key area of focus for providers in working with their clients to unlock the benefits of public cloud services".

Hybrid cloud scenarios will also play a key role in the future as more organizations are using a combination of cloud services from a variety of different cloud providers.

However, those that are not planning to use hybrid cloud raised a number of concerns including integration challenges, application incompatibilities, a lack of management tools, a lack of common APIs and a lack of support from vendors.

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