Cloud market soars as prices shrink

IDC claims battle for market share to hot up in coming years

The battle for the cloud market is set to hot up in the next three years, according to IDC, which claims price cuts and rapid growth mean the competition is wide open.

According to the analyst's Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker, the worldwide public cloud services market reached $45.7bn (£26.67bn) last year, and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23 per cent until 2018.

The US currently holds almost 68 per cent of the cloud services market but IDC expects this to fall to 59 per cent in the near future as the share grabbed by western Europe grows from 19 per cent to 23 per cent. Emerging regions will grow above the global average, it added.

Frank Gens, chief analyst at IDC, said the battle for leadership and innovation in the cloud was at a "pivotal" time right now.

"[There is] very rapid growth in customer cloud service spending across 19 product categories and within eight geographic regions," he said.

"Not coincidentally, we see vendors introducing many new cloud offerings and slashing cloud pricing in order to capture market share. Market share leadership will certainly be up for grabs over the next two to three years."

Enterprise resource management (ERM) and CRM technology make up most of the global cloud services market, according to IDC, which placed their respective market share figures at 24 per cent and 18 per cent.

All areas of the cloud market – ERM, CRM, server, collaborative applications, security software and other markets – will grow at a double-digit CAGR by 2018, IDC added.