IDC Forecasts U.S. Public IT Cloud Services Revenue to Grow 21.6%

Study predicts a five-year compound annual revenue growth rate of 21.6% in the U.S. public IT cloud services.

International Data Corporation (IDC) today announced the availability of a new study, U.S. Public IT Cloud Services by Industry Sector: More Details on the Opportunity (IDC #226222), which forecasts that from 2009 to 2014, U.S. public IT cloud services revenue will grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 21.6%, from $11.1 billion to $29.5 billion.

According to the new forecast, the professional services, communications and media, and discrete and process manufacturing markets will generate the most public IT cloud services revenue. The professional services market, in particular, is the sweet spot of public IT cloud services partly due to the multitude of information-dependent midsize companies that will adopt software-as-a-service.

"This research breaks new ground by sizing US Public IT Cloud services revenue by 18 vertical markets," statedRuthbea Yesner Clarke, a program manager in IDC's Vertical Markets Research Group, and one of the primary authors of the study. "This forecast will help suppliers to quantify the market opportunities on a granular level."

Other findings in the study include:

  • The services and distribution sector – which includes vertical markets such as retail, wholesale, professional services, consumer and recreational services, and transportation – contributes the largest share of U.S. public IT cloud services revenue. Currently a $3 billion market, IDC estimates that it will more than double to $8.5 billion by 2014.
  • Applications account for more than half of revenues in 2009, but over the forecast period, applications will drop to one-third of the market revenue and infrastructure software will grow to 22% of all revenue.
  • Verticals that are highly regulated or with serious privacy and security data concerns, such as government, banking, and healthcare, will be limited in their spending on public cloud IT services beyond certain applications such as email, messaging, and collaboration.

"While the healthcare vertical will represent less than 5% of this market's total revenue in 2014, it will experience a high compound annual growth rate of nearly 23% through the forecast period. Despite serious concerns about privacy, current healthcare reform and the rise of connected healthcare will lead providers to the public cloud for specific functions such as collaboration applications," Ms. Clarke explained.

Join IDC Health Insights for a complimentary web conference to be held March 1, 2011 at 12:00 p.m., US Eastern time, that will provide insights into the adoption of cloud services in the healthcare market. Register at: http://bit.ly/CloudinHealthcare.

Public IT cloud services, as distinguished from private IT cloud services, are browser-based and are available to any person or entity. Public cloud services are off-premise from a customer standpoint and do not require any dedicated, application-specific, or proprietary client-side hardware or software to support access.

IDC's public IT cloud services forecast data is segmented by six vertical sectors and by five functional technology categories. The functional categories include applications, application development and deployment software, system infrastructure software, servers, and basic storage. Revenue data is segmented further by 18 vertical markets including banking, education, government, healthcare, insurance, retail, transportation, and utilities.

For additional information about this study, or to arrange a one-on-one briefing with Ruthbea Clarke, please contact Sarah Murray at 781-794-3214 or [email protected]. For information on purchasing reports, contact [email protected]; reporters should email [email protected].

 

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