India cloud services market to cross $326 mn

BANGALORE, INDIA: The public cloud services market in India is forecast to grow 32.4 per cent in 2012 to total $326.2 million, according to Gartner. Worldwide public cloud services revenue is on pace to total $111 billion this year.

"The cloud services market is clearly a high-growth sector within the overall IT marketplace," said Ed Anderson, research director, Gartner. "The key to taking advantage of this growth will be understanding the nuances of the opportunity within service segments and geographic regions, and then prioritizing investments in line with the opportunities."

Software as a service (SaaS) is the largest segment and is forecast to grow to $115.6 million in 2012, while infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is forecast to grow from $35.2 million in 2011 to $42.7 million in 2012.

Business process services (also known as business process-as-a-service, or BPaaS) is the next-largest segment primarily because of the inclusion of cloud advertising as a subsegment. BPaaS is forecast to grow to $112.1 million in 2012, up from $90.3 million in 2011. By 2016, cloud compute services will become the largest single segment within the public cloud services market in India growing to $140.8 million, and accounting for about 14 per cent of total public cloud services spending.

Growth in application infrastructure services (also known as platform-as-a-service, or PaaS) will also be high, although it is a smaller market relative to the other segments. PaaS is strategic and considered to be a critical growth driver for other segments, including BPaaS and SaaS. The PaaS segment is forecast to grow to $15.7 million in 2012. Cloud management and security services constitute a new forecast segment comprising cloud security services, IT operations management (ITOM) and storage management (including back-up and recovery services).

The cloud management and security services segment is forecast to grow to $40.1 million in 2012.

High growth rates will occur in emerging markets, including the top three growth countries of India, Indonesia and China. However, 81 percent of spending increases will come from North America and Western Europe. For cloud services providers, this will require a strategic approach when considering both high-volume and high-growth markets. Both will be important in the development of sustained, global strategies.