Gartner, the world’s leading research and consulting company, recently reported that cloud services are shaking up industry. “We know of no vendor or service provider today whose business model offerings and revenue growth are not influenced by the increasing adoption of cloud-first strategies in organizations,” the company wrote in a recent press release.
Here are their projections:
- The worldwide public cloud services market is expected to grow 17.5 percent in 2019.
- The fastest-growing market segment will be cloud system infrastructure services, also called Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which is forecast to grow 27.5 percent in 2019.
- The next-fastest-growing segment will be cloud application infrastructure services, also called Platform as a Service (PaaS), at 21.8 percent.
- The largest cloud shift before 2018 was in Software as a Service (SaaS), where—for customer relationship management—more IT spending goes to the cloud than in traditional software. Application software will retain the highest percentage of cloud shift through 2022.
But this is only the beginning.
- Through 2022, the size of the cloud services industry will grow at nearly three times the growth of overall IT services.
- According to recent Gartner surveys, more than a third of organizations see cloud investments as a top-three investing priority.
- Gartner expects that by the end of 2019, more than 30 per cent of technology providers’ new software investments will shift from cloud-first to cloud-only. This means that license-based software consumption will fall further while SaaS and subscription-based cloud consumption models will continue to rise.
A steep learning curve ahead for firms
Organizations will need cloud-related services, such as cloud consulting, implementation, migration, and managed services to move to public clouds. Gartner expects 28 percent of spending in key IT segments to shift to cloud-based services by 2022.
In-house technology product managers for cloud-related services need to focus on delivering solutions that combine their own experience and execution with the services provided by hyperscalers. This complementary approach will help organizations transform and optimize both their infrastructure and operations, Gartner says.
However, firms will also need an effective strategy if they are to succeed. Yet, according to a recent Gartner UK survey, less than one-third of enterprises currently have a documented cloud strategy.
That’s why organizations need to stay up to date with the latest developments in the cloud industry and understand what they need to bring to the table to make it work. Only then can they devise an effective strategy that adequately considers all the complexities of migrating to — and managing — the cloud.