Cloud services sales zoomed past infrastructure market revenues for the first time in 2016, according to analyst Synergy Research’s latest data.
Total revenues spanning six major cloud services and infrastructure markets reached $148bn for the trailing four quarters ended 30 September 2016, reflecting a 25 per cent spike from the same period in 2015, the researcher said.
Of that overall market value, hardware and software spend on cloud infrastructure was about $65bn during the period, with private cloud generating more than half the total, but public cloud spending growing far more rapidly at about 22 per cent, Synergy said.
It was the first time the firm’s figures showed cloud services’ annual spend surpassing that of cloud infrastructure hardware and software. When viewed together, the data shows that cloud services markets are now growing three times faster than cloud infrastructure.
Among cloud services, IaaS and PaaS services recorded the highest growth rate at 53 percent for the measurement period, in a market dominated by Amazon and Microsoft. By comparison, hosted private cloud infrastructure services, led by IBM and Rackspace, advanced by 35 per cent and enterprise SaaS, topped by Microsoft and Salesforce, grew at 34 per cent.
SaaS is still the largest cloud services segment, having accumulated more than $40bn during the measured quarters. Infrastructure investments by cloud service providers helped them to generate almost $30bn in revenues from IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud services, Synergy figured.
Synergy founder and chief analyst Jeremy Duke said that significant barriers to cloud adoption are “almost a thing of the past, especially on the public cloud side”.