'2012 global cloud services market grown to $45 bn'

BANGALORE, INDIA: Hosting and cloud services provider, Parallels has released the latest updates to Parallels SMB Cloud Insights, its primary and proprietary research that profiles the buying behavior of small and medium businesses (SMBs) with regard to cloud services.

The result reveals that SMBs remain the fastest growing segment for cloud services and the optimal target market for service providers of all sizes, with the global market for SMB cloud services expanding at a 28 percent CAGR to $95 billion by 2015.

The report further added that storage is a strong upsell opportunity for Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers, and 50 percent of SMBs are willing to pay more for increased storage.

"Parallels SMB Cloud Insights research is core to our commitment to help service providers make both strategic and tactical decisions about the rapidly growing market for SMB cloud services," said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels.

Website building tools are a key way to differentiate service providers' offerings, said the report. Currently, 22 percent of U.S. SMBs are building and managing their websites with such tools, and 30 percent report they plan to adopt website building tools by 2015.

Globally, the 2012 cloud services market has grown to $45 billion USD as at least 6 million SMBs entered the cloud market for the first time last year said Steen and further added, "The global market will continue to grow at 28 percent CAGR through 2015 to a forecasted $95 billion USD."

SMB cloud insights research findings include:

* In the United States, the SMB cloud market is now $18.9 billion USD and is forecast to grow at a 19 percent CAGR through 2015. This growth is driven by SaaS applications, which saw 60 percent growth in 2012. Additionally, 68 percent of SMBs indicated they would prefer to buy their cloud services as part of a discounted bundle.

* In Brazil, Parallels predicts the SMB market will grow by 33 percent year-over-year for the next three years, reaching $2.6 billion USD by the end of 2015.

* In Mexico, the SMB cloud services market grew 30 percent last year, and will continue to grow at 45% over the next three years, making it one of the world's fastest growing SMB markets.

The latest research reports include worldwide market sizing, forecast and penetration rates of SMB cloud services, along with country-level breakouts for the United States, Brazil and Mexico.