Thematic Research: Cloud Computing (2020)

The market for cloud infrastructure is diverse and includes traditional full-stack infrastructure vendors such as VMware, IBM, Oracle, Dell EMC, Cisco, and HPE. These companies offer enterprises the entire suite of hardware and software components for building and operating a cloud environment, including the server, storage, and networking infrastructure, virtualization technology, and management software. In addition to offering enterprises the requisite technologies for building a private cloud environment, many of these large infrastructure vendors also offer turnkey private cloud solutions that are designed to help enterprise customers get up and running with a private cloud solution quickly and with relative ease.

The global cloud services market is a complex, multi-layered, and quickly evolving sector populated by a disparate mix of providers offering a cross-section of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions. Some of the most dominant providers deliver solutions at all layers of the cloud stack (e.g., Microsoft Azure, AWS, IBM) while others specialize in one segment.

One of the biggest challenges associated with cloud adoption for enterprises is a lack of internal expertise. Public and private sector organizations often turn to third-party experts for professional services that run the gamut from design and application re-engineering to post-deployment support. All of the large systems integrators such as Accenture, Deloitte, and Capgemini offer cloud-specific professional services, many of which are tailored for particular vertical industries. SIs often partner with top-tier cloud service providers, such as AWS and Google, to offer professional services optimized for the latter service providers’ platforms.

Key findings discussed in the report include:

• The market for cloud infrastructure: Diverse and includes traditional full-stack infrastructure vendors such as VMware, IBM, Oracle, Dell EMC, Cisco, and HPE
• Challenges associated with cloud adoption
• Cloud computing refers to the provision of IT infrastructure and platform services to provide a flexible, scalable, and on-demand IT environment. At the simplest level of abstraction, it may refer only to IT infrastructure, such as a remotely hosted server, while at the furthest level of abstraction, it refers to a remotely hosted software application together with all the computing elements required to provide that software, such as a data center, networking equipment, servers, storage, operating software, and security software
• Major trends shaping the cloud computing industry: Technology trends, macroeconomic trends and regulatory trends
• Market size and growth forecasts: GlobalData estimates that, in 2019, total global spending by enterprises on IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS amounted to $273.4 billion. We predict that global spending by enterprises on cloud services will reach $284.4 billion by the end of 2020, up by 4% year-on-year (y-o-y), and $429.4 billion by the end of 2024
• Cloud management platforms: Cloud management platforms include solutions for monitoring and managing cloud spend, providing insights into cloud service usage, and enforcing security and compliance
• Enterprise cloud spending falls into categories such as Cloud Infrastructure and Cloud Services
• Cloud service markets: In the IaaS and PaaS markets, traditional IT stack infrastructure vendors, specializing in everything from databases and operating systems to virtualization, compute, storage, and networking, face competition from public cloud service providers

Inside coverage:

• Players
• Technology briefing
• Trends
• Industry analysis
• Value chain
• Companies
• Sector scorecards
• Glossary
• Further reading
• Thematic methodology

GlobalData, uses a scorecard approach to predict tomorrow’s leading companies within each sector. Our sector scorecards have three screens: a thematic screen, a valuation screen, and a risk screen. Cloud computing is a theme that impacts many of the 17 technology, media, and telecom (TMT) sectors we cover. In this report, we focus specifically on the cloud services and IT services sectors.