Gartner warns about top cloud players “influence”

Silhouette Men Wearing Suits And Hats

Silhouette Men Wearing Suits And Hats

The top 10 public cloud providers are getting bigger and will have rather a lot of influence and power in the IaaS space, according to analyst outfit Gartner.

The market leaders will grow their market share to 70 percent this year, according to Gartner, which has warned against the industry’s top players gaining an “unchecked influence” on the IaaS space.

Public cloud revenues will jump by 21 percent year on year in 2018, pushing total sales to $186.4 billion.

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

The most lucrative segments cloud application services (SaaS), which is set to generate $73.6 billion in revenues in the same time frame. By 2021, SaaS is expected to make up 45 percent 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 percent in 2016 to 70 percent by 2021.

Research director at Gartner Sid Nag said 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 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.”