Public cloud market to smash $200bn barrier

Gartner claims market will grow in double digits in 2016

The global public cloud services market will break the $200m (£140m) barrier this year, according to Gartner, which partly credits a boom in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) for the growth.

By the end of this year, Gartner expects the public cloud services market to reach $204bn, up 16 per cent from $175bn last year.

The analyst splits up the market into six categories - business process services (BPaaS), application services (SaaS), application infrastructure services (PaaS), systems infrastructure services (IaaS), management and security services, and cloud advertising.

All categories are expected to grow in 2016, Gartner said, with all but the cloud advertising market exceeding the respective growth rate of last year.

IaaS will be the fastest-growing segment of the market, Gartner said, predicting it will rocket 38.4 per cent annually this year.

"IaaS continues to be the strongest-growing segment as enterprises move away from datacentre build-outs and move their infrastructure needs to the public cloud," said Gartner research director Sid Nag. "Certain market leaders have built a significant lead in this segment, so providers should focus on creating differentiation for success."