Unbelievable Cloud Numbers
Market research is almost always imprecise, but in the case of the cloud market, it is darn near ridiculous. A little while ago I looked into this due to the fact that the cloud constitutes more and more of our everyday coverage. Here's what I found:
- IDC sees a huge growth for this market, some "six times the rate of IT spending between now and 2013. In 2009, approximately $17 billion was spent on cloud-related technologies, hardware and software. By 2013, that spending is expected to grow to $45 billion." In two years, cloud spending could account for 25 percent of IT spending growth.
- Merrill Lynch sees a much, much larger market, and believes next year that "the volume of cloud computing market opportunity [will] amount to $160 billion, including $95 billion in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65 billion in online advertising."
- Gartner was somewhere in the middle and estimated a $56.3 billion cloud market for next year.
Now, Gartner has added some fresh projections: The cloud already accounts for more than 12 percent of current IT budgets, the Gartner eggheads claim. That will only increase, as 40 percent of those surveyed will increase their portion of cloud spending next year.
Are you into the cloud? Float your story my way at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 09/24/2010 at 1:18 PM