Storage to Represent 40% of Total Cloud 2010 Revenues

The cloud computing marketplace will reach $16.7bn in revenue by 2013, according to a new report from the 451 Market Monitor, a market-sizing and forecasting service from The 451 Group, an independent IT research and analyst organization.

Including the large and well-established software-as-a-service (SaaS) category, cloud computing will grow from revenue of $8.7bn in 2010 to $16.7bn in 2013, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24%.

The core cloud computing market will grow at much more rapid pace as the cloud increasingly becomes a mainstream IT strategy embraced by corporate enterprises and government agencies. Excluding SaaS revenue, cloud-delivered platform and infrastructure services will grow from $964m in revenue in 2010 to $3.9bn 2013 – a CAGR of 60% – the report said. The core market includes platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings, as well as the cloud-delivered software used to build and manage a cloud environment, which The 451 Group calls ‘software infrastructure as a service’ (SIaaS).

Cloud-based storage will play a starring role in cloud growth, accounting for nearly 40% of the core cloud pie in 2010. "We view storage as the most fertile sector, and predict that cloud storage will experience the strongest growth in the cloud platforms segment," the report says.