Worldwide public cloud and infrastructure spending continues to experience high levels of growth, with the market expected to reach $266 billion in 2021.

According to IDC’s latest Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide, this growth is likely to slow down between now and 2021, but this will not affect the market gaining a five-year compound growth rate of 21%.

It is expected that the United States will see the fastest growth, while also being the largest market for public cloud services to account for over 60% of worldwide revenues in forecast and total spending of $163 billion in 2021.

Angela Vacca, SRM, Customer Insights and Analysis said: “In Western Europe, the public cloud market is going to more than double in the 2016-2021 timeframe led by strong spending growth in Germany, which is also the largest national market, Italy and Sweden. The industries that will grow the most in the period under investigation ate utilities, discrete manufacturing, insurance and professional services.”

In the US, the industries that will spend most on public cloud services are discrete manufacturing, which includes the manufacturing of products such as smartphones and automobiles. This is along with professional services and banking, all of which will account for up to one third of all public cloud services spending in 2021.

Read more: Public cloud spending in 2017 to surpass $120bn

Western Europe and Asia/Pacific however, will reach public cloud services spending levels of $52 and $25 billion. “The growth of the cloud market is further pushed by the rise of Digital Transformation (DX), as cloud is expected to be the default delivery mode for DX projects in Europe,” said Vacca.

Surprisingly, despite the high levels of growth in the market, Software as a Service (SaaS) will still remain as the dominant cloud computing type to reach almost 60% in 2021. According to IDC, majority of SaaS spending will be dominated by application purchases.

This year alone, spending on the technology was forecast to reach $128 billion, and that’s an increase of over 25% from 2016.