Public cloud spending to pass $100bn in 2017

cloud (264 x 264)Public IT cloud services spending could sail past the $100 billion milestone in 2017, according to figures from IDC.

Worldwide spending will reach a chunky $47.4 billion for this year, and is expected to reach $107 billion in 2017. The analyst house expects the scale of cloud adoption to grow significantly and rapidly, especially as IT infrastructure at many companies begins to age. According to IDC, systems are becoming so complex and expensive that an alternative – cloud – will be the only way out.

IDC believes that initial hesitation towards privacy and control in cloud are now being addressed, and more competition in the segment is going to seriously lower prices and expand choice of services to potential customers.

IDC cites Google as a company experiencing rapid growth in cloud adoption. Over 5 million are estimated to be using the company’s cloud offering, Google Apps, compared to 3 million in 2009.

Senior IDC analyst Frank Gens believes with the emergence of business as a service, cloud adoption will pick up, and its value with it. “Much of the growth in cloud services is being driven by the increase in deployment options,” Gens said.

“The growing richness of these options is a clear accelerator for overall cloud services adoption,” Gens said. “The emergence of virtual private cloud offerings has helped to shift momentum from dedicated private cloud offerings toward public cloud offerings”.