The cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market will hit $4 billion within the next four years, according to recent research by In-Stat.
The IaaS boom is a big opportunity for solution providers that can offer solutions riding atop cloud infrastructures. And the recent spate of IaaS player acquisitions, including Verizon's acquisition of Terremark for $1.4 billion; CenturyLink's purchase of Savvis, which is expected to close this week; and Citrix's blockbuster buyout of open source cloud infrastructure player Cloud.com this week, are showing increased interest in cloud infrastructure.
But it's not just the Infrastructure-as-a-Service market that is set to explode.
"Growth is expected in all public cloud service segments," Greg Potter, In-Stat analyst, said in a statement. "Many SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications have been around for a long time, but only now since the advent of entire platforms for applications, such as Google Apps and Force.com, are these applications gaining the necessary visibility among businesses to gain traction in the software market. Infrastructure-as-a-Service is also gaining traction, especially in the small business market."
Along with the cloud infrastructure maturation, In-Stat estimated that the SaaS market will increase a whopping 142 percent between 2010 and 2015, and that growth will push overall public cloud computing, which ties in IaaS, SaaS and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) up an additional 153 percent over that same five year period.
Small businesses are adopting the cloud at a more rapid clip than companies of other sizes. Organizations with five to 99 employees are the fastest growing segment for public cloud computing and will increase public cloud spending from $2.5 billion in 2010 to $6.6 billion in 2015. In-Stat estimated that small businesses already account for more than half of the market for SaaS and IaaS.
Meanwhile, the top five verticals for Infrastructure-as-a-Service by 2011 market revenue will be hospitality, food, healthcare, social services and retail trade. The bottom five verticals will be mining, forestry, fishing, agricultural services and utilities.
