For those peddling multiple types of cloud there’s some good news – the market is growing extremely quickly.
Such is the pace of the growth of whole cloud, which is public, private, hybrid, that IDC reckons the worldwide revenues will reach $554 billion in 2021, more than double those of 2016.
It’s easy to picture cloud vendors across the world rubbing their hands with glee at what Frank Gens, SVP and chief analyst at IDC calls a “mass movement” to adopt cloud in all of its forms, a movement that isn’t expected to slow down during the forecast period.
So dominant now is public cloud, 41% of all cloud-related spending in 2016 and expected to be 48% by 2021, (which discounts the spending on hardware, software, and managed and professional services which enables its use) that it’s becoming almost impossible for enterprises and developers not to use it, partly thanks to the constant innovation in this field. 
Gens said: “Equally important, though, is the steady drumbeat of tech innovation that is coming from the major public cloud suppliers, making it virtually impossible for enterprises and developers seeking advantage through IT not to embrace the public cloud.”
Public cloud advances across blockchain, IoT back-end data services, encryption services, and serverless computing services, are expected to continue at a rapid pace, even accelerate. IDC expects to see a “steady expansion of enterprise workloads on the cloud” as CSPs and their partners look into new deployments for these kinds of workloads.
Managed and professional services support public and hybrid cloud environments will collectively account for the second largest opportunity in the cloud market, making up 31% of all cloud-related spending in 2016 and 2021.
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The History of Cloud
“As IDC’s figures show, the massive shift towards cloud – particularly multi- and hybrid-cloud installations – continues apace. The majority of enterprises no longer need convincing that cloud will benefit their organisations, but what remains an issue for many, is that the typical enterprise’s IT infrastructure has now become vastly more complex. Juggling service providers with numerous different SLAs and T&Cs mean that cloud performance can suffer as a result.
“The cloud ‘stack’ no longer just encompasses SaaS, IaaS and PaaS services – and the fact that spending on cloud managed and professional services accounts for 31% of all cloud-related spend underlines that organisations are now seeking to regain control. The value of an overarching, sophisticated management layer that can provide real-time visibility into a cloud environment cannot be understated,” Ron Vermeulen, Manager, Cloud Solutions at COMPAREX.
The impact of cloud and the hyperscale data centres operated by the CSPs is also having a huge impact on the infrastructure hardware and software market. So large is the impact that IDC expects that by 2021, CSPs will account for 76% of cloud-related infrastructure hardware and software spending.
