Cloud based services boost IT spend globally - Viewpoint - careers advice blog Viewpoint careers advice blog

Cloud based services boost IT spend globally - Viewpoint - careers advice blog The global demand for cloud-based services skills will just keep on rising throughout 2013 and beyond. The worldwide market for public cloud services is set to show strong growth this year, according to research from leading IT consultancy, Gartner. It predicts that revenues for this sector will be up by 18.5 per cent in 2013 to $131 billion. What growth patterns are emerging? Emerging markets in Asia/Pacific, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa are still relatively small but have the highest growth rates â€" with the exception of China, which is huge and growing. The larger, more mature markets of North America, Western Europe, Japan and the mature Asia/Pacific countries are growing more slowly. But everywhere you look, spending on cloud services is a bright spot in the IT marketplace. The areas to watch are the key components of the cloud services model: Business process services (BPaaS) Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) Platform as a service (PaaS) Software as a service (SaaS) IaaS, which includes cloud compute, storage and print services, is the fastest-expanding segment of the market. It grew by 42.4 percent in 2012 to $6.1 billion and is expected to reach $9 billion by the end of 2013 â€" a rise of 47.3 percent. Some of the highest growth will be in software as a service, also known as software on demand with particular focus on cloud-based office suites and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Growth in software as a service will also be supported by strong growth in platform as a service. Cloud management and security servicesare also expected to expand stronglythrough 2016. North America is the largest region in the cloud services market and will account for 59 percent of all new spending on cloud services from 2013 through 2016. Western Europe comes second with 24 percent of all new spending. But according to Gartner, the highest growth rates will come from Emerging Asia/Pacific (led by Indonesia and India), Greater China and Latin America (led by Argentina, Mexico and Brazil). What do you think is driving this acceleration in the adoption of the cloud model?