According to the market research institute IDC, the cloud market could see an average annual rate of growth of 19% in the coming years and could reach a volume of USD 200 billion by 2018. IDC combines SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, hardware, software and other services under the generic term “cloud”.
Global IT expenditure is set to rise to a level of USD 3.8 trillion in 2015. Analysts estimate that this amount is unlikely to change significantly in the years to come. They only see growth rates of 13% on average in expenditure for the “third platform”, which by definition comprises cloud, mobile, big data and social. According to IDC, the trade partners of IT companies will play a particularly important role in the digital transformation of companies as they enjoy a high degree of trust from the customers as “trusted advisors”.
A free download of the study carried out on behalf of Microsoft is available in PDF format. (Source: IDC/rf)