NEEDHAM, Mass.—As broadcasters and media companies join many other industries embracing cloud-based technologies, the worldwide public cloud services market spiked by 29% in 2021 to $408.6 billion according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker.
IDC defines those services as including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service – System Infrastructure Software (SaaS – SIS), and Software as a Service.
Spending also continued to consolidate in 2021 with the combined revenue of the top 5 public cloud service providers (Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce Inc., Google, and SAP) capturing nearly 40% of the worldwide total and growing 36.6% year over year, the IDC said.
With offerings in all four deployment categories, Microsoft captured the top position in the overall public cloud services market with 14.4% share in 2021, followed closely by Amazon Web Services with 13.7% share.
"Organizations continued their strong adoption of shared public cloud services in 2021 to align IT investments more closely with business outcomes and ensure rapid access to the innovations required to be a digital-first business," said Rick Villars, group vice president, Worldwide Research at IDC. "For the next several years, leading cloud providers will play a critical role in helping enterprises navigate the current storms of disruption (inflation, supply chain, and geopolitical tensions), but IT teams will also focus more on bringing greater financial accountability to the variable spend models of public cloud services."
SaaS Applications were the largest category in 2021, growing 23.5% to $177.8 billion. It was followed by IaaS, up 35.6% to $91.3 billion, SaaS System Infrastructure software, up 26.4% to $71.2 billion and PaaS, up 39.1% to 68.2%.
"SaaS applications remain the largest and most mature segment of public cloud, with 2021 revenues that have now reached $177 billion,” said Eric Newmark, group vice president and general manager of IDC's SaaS, Enterprise Software, and Worldwide Services division. “The tailwinds of the pandemic continued to fuel expedited upgrades and replacements of older systems in 2021, though company goals haven't changed. Companies seek applications that will help increase enterprise intelligence, improve operational efficiency, and drive better decision making. Ease of use, ease of implementation and integration, streamlined workflows, data and analytical accessibility, and time to value are the key criteria driving purchasing decisions, though verticalization has also steadily increased as a key priority,"
