Public cloud spending set to soar to $100bn by 2016

IDC predicts market will be worth $40bn at the end of 2012, with growth strongest in US and western Europe

Worldwide spending on public cloud services will surpass $100bn (£62bn) in 2016, according to new figures from IDC.

The analyst also predicts that by the end of this year, spending across the globe will reach $40bn as the market grows at five times the rate of the IT industry as a whole.

According to the Worldwide and Regional Public IT Cloud Services 2012-2016 Forecast, IDC predicts that IT cloud services will account for 16 per cent of IT revenue in applications, system infrastructure, platform-as-a-service, servers and basic storage by 2016.

IDC, which defines public cloud as "an offering designed for, and commercially offered to, a largely unrestricted marketplace of potential users", predicts the US and western Europe will enjoy the most growth in the market.

Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC, said: "The IT industry is in the midst of an important transformative period as companies invest in the technologies that will drive growth and innovation over the next two to three decades.

"By the end of the decade, IDC expects at least 80 per cent of the industry's growth, and enterprises' highest-value leverage of IT, will be driven by cloud services and the other third-platform technologies."