Worldwide revenues from public Cloud services are set to reach more than $195 billion in 2020, according to IDC.
This will more than double the $96.5 billion in revenues forecast for 2016 and represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.4 per cent over the 2015-2020 forecast period.
In 2015, Cloud software including applications as a service, system infrastructure software-as-a-service (Saas), application development and deployment (AD&D) and platform as-as-a-service (PaaS) accounted for 83.7 per cent of all public Cloud revenue.
However, in the coming years, IDC said Infrastructure as-a-service (IaaS) and PaaS are set to surpass the growth of SaaS, expanding their share of overall revenues in the process.
According to IDC senior research analyst, SaaS and business models, Benjamin McGrath, Cloud software will significantly outpace traditional software product delivery over the next five years, growing nearly three times faster than the entire software market.
"By 2020, about half of all new business software purchases will be of service-enabled software, and Cloud software will constitute more than a quarter of all software sold,” he said.
McGrath added that whilst manufacturing, banking and professional services lead the current public Cloud spending representing a third of total global revenue in 2016, media, telecommunications and retail will see the fastest revenue growth over the five-year forecast.
IDC program director, customer insights and analytics, Eileen Smith, said Cloud computing is breaking down the traditional technology barriers as business leaders and their IT departments rely on Cloud to flexibly deliver IT resources at a lower cost and faster speed.
"Organisations across all industries are now free to adapt to market changes quicker and take more risks, as they are no longer bound by legacy IT constraints," added Smith.
IDC also forecasts the US to be the largest market for public Cloud services, generating nearly two thirds of total worldwide revenues throughout the forecast, followed by Western Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Additionally, Latin America and Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) will experience the greatest revenue growth over the forecast period, while all eight regions are forecast to see revenue growth greater than 100 per cent over the next five years.
