Gartner flags public cloud giants' 'unchecked influence'

Analyst predicts that public cloud spending will vault by over a fifth this year, with IaaS sales set to boom 36 per cent

The top 10 public cloud providers will grow their market share to 70 per cent this year, according to Gartner, which has warned against the industry's top players gaining an "unchecked influence" on the IaaS space.

The market watcher has forecast public cloud revenues to jump by 21 per cent year on year in 2018, pushing total sales to $186.4bn.

The fastest-growing segment of the market remains infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), claims Gartner, which is forecast to grow 36 per cent to total $40.8bn in sales in 2018.

Meanwhile, the most lucrative segment by some margin is cloud application services (SaaS), which is set to generate $73.6bn in revenues in the same time frame. By 2021, SaaS is expected to make up 45 per cent of the entire cloud market.

Gartner also found that despite an increasing number of firms moving into the cloud space, the top 10 public cloud giants are set to swell their market share from 50 per cent in 2016 to 70 per cent by 2021.

Research director at Gartner Sid Nag added a word of caution, warning that while a buoyant market creates enormous opportunities for end users, firms should be wary of the increasing dominance of hyperscale IaaS providers.

"While [cloud] enables efficiencies and cost benefits, organisations need to be cautious about IaaS providers potentially gaining unchecked influence over customers and the market," he said.

"Although these large vendors have different strengths, and customers generally feel comfortable that they will be able to meet their current and future needs, other database-as-a-service (dbPaaS) offerings may be good choices for organisations looking to avoid lock-in."