Global cloud storage market is expected to reach $46.8bn by 2018 rising at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 40.2%, during the period, according to report by MarketsandMarkets.

The report said expansion of the cloud storage market will be driven by the growth of Big Data, or the unstructured data generated within today’s digital ecosystem.

According to the report, growing digital trend has led to spike in the volume, speed and variety of unstructured data and with the growing data volume it would pose a challenge before organisations store the data securely and at a low infrastructure cost.

The growth in data volume is expected to push companies to migrate large amount of data and applications to the virtual environment or cloud storage and without being required to spend too much on infrastructure, the report revealed.

With the growth of Big data the cloud storage market will grow at a steady rate and the adoption is not expected to slow down any time sooner, according to the analysts.

The global cloud market expected to grow from $5.6bn in 2012 to $46.8bn by 2013, growing at an estimated CAGR of 40.2% from 2013 to 2018.

Geographically, North America accounts largest share of the worldwide cloud storage market, contributing $3.4bn in 2012 representing 60% of the overall market.

From 2013 and 2018 North America is expected to growt at a CAGR of 33.8%, reaching $21.8bn by the end of the forecast period.