As more and more organizations starting to transition their data into the cloud and tap into web-based applications, the global cloud computing market is continuing to grow at high speed.Analyst firm 451 Market Monitor has predicted that it expects the cloud computing marketplace to reach $16.7 billion in revenue by 2013.

According to its report, the large and well-established software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) category, cloud computing will grow from revenue of $8.7bn in 2010 to $16.7bn in 2013, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24 percent.

The research firm believes that the core cloud computing market will grow at much more rapid pace as the cloud increasingly becomes a mainstream IT strategy embraced by corporate enterprises and government agencies.

 Excluding SaaS revenue, cloud-delivered platform and infrastructure services will grow from $964m in revenue in 2010 to $3.9bn 2013 - a CAGR of 60% - the report said.

 The core market includes platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings, as well as the cloud-delivered software used to build and manage a cloud environment, which The 451 Group (News - Alert) calls 'software infrastructure as a service' (SIaaS).

Cloud-based storage will play a starring role in cloud growth, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the core cloud pie in 2010. "We view storage as the most fertile sector, and predict that cloud storage will experience the strongest growth in the cloud platforms segment," the report says.

In June, Gartner said worldwide cloud computing services market is poised for strong growth and its revenue might reach USD 148.8 billion by 2014.

Last month, another market analyst firm Renub Research had predicted that global cloud computing market might cross $25 billion by the end of 2013.