Cloud Adoption Growing Faster Than Expected, IDC Says

IDC (News - Alert) now warns resellers that the migration to public and private clouds is happening more rapidly than expected, and they need to gear up for it or risk becoming irrelevant. Early cloud services adopters spent about $560 million on cloud professional services worldwide in 2010, but by 2015 IDC estimates the market will have ballooned to $8.2 billion.

"We don't expect everything to go to the cloud, but the early adopters are likely to move a majority of their IT to cloud within the next five years, and the vast majority will follow suit within a few years," said IDC research director Mette Ahorlu.

Separately, a survey conducted by Kelton Research on behalf of Avenade, also shows that 74 percent of companies are using some form of cloud services today, a 25 percent growth in adoption since Avanade’s September 2009 survey.

The survey also shows private cloud deployments are growing, especially where critical, differentiating internal operations and customer services are at stake. Today, 43 percent of companies report they use private cloud services, while an additional 34 percent say they will begin to do so in the next six to 12 months.

Though Apple’s iCloud services are available “at no incremental cost,” analysts at Forrester Research (News - Alert) estimate there is about $12 billion in annual revenue (by 2016), about $6 billion earned in the form of subscription fees,  to be earned by providers of “personal cloud” services that help people manage their personal and work-related information across the many devices they use. 

A survey for Cable & Wireless (News - Alert) Worldwide by Ovum suggests enterprises are adopting cloud services. The survey of more than 100 global multinational corporations throughout North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific showed that cloud services adoption is up 61 percent from April 2010, with 45 percent of MNCs already utilizing cloud sourcing for at least some IT services.

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