The public cloud services market is estimated to grow 18.5 per cent in 2013 to $ 131 billion globally, up from $ 111 billion in 2012, research firm Gartner said today.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), including cloud computing, storage and print services, is expected to continue as the fastest-growing segment of the market, to grow 47.3 per cent in 2013 to $ 9 billion from $ 6.1 billion in 2012, Gartner said in a statement.

“The continued growth of the cloud services market will result from adoption for production systems and work-loads, in addition to development and testing scenarios that have led as the most prominent use case for public cloud services to date,” Gartner Research Director Ed Anderson said.

Cloud advertising continued to be the largest segment of the cloud services market, comprising 48 per cent of the total market in 2012, Gartner said in a statement.

From 2013 through 2016, $ 677 billion will be spent on cloud services worldwide, of which $ 310 billion will be spent on cloud advertising, Gartner said.

The cloud business process services segment (BPaaS) is the second-largest market segment after cloud advertising, comprising 28 per cent of the total market in 2012.

This is followed by cloud application services (software as a service [SaaS]) at 14.7 per cent, cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS) at 5.5 per cent, cloud management and security services at 2.8 per cent, and cloud application infrastructure services (platform as a service [PaaS]) at one per cent.

Emerging markets in Asia/Pacific, Latin America, Eastern Europe, West Asia and North Africa show the highest growth rates, while representing the smallest overall markets.

China is the exception, being both a large and growing market, Gartner said.

“Local economic factors, regulatory issues, the local political climate, the diverse landscape of global and local providers, including non-cloud providers, and other country-specific factors ensure a unique marketplace in each country and region,” Anderson said.

North America is the largest region in the cloud services market, accounting for 59 per cent of all new spending on cloud services from 2013 through 2016.

Western Europe, despite the growth challenges in the region, remains the second-largest region and will account for 24 per cent of all new spending during the same time period.

The highest growth rates for cloud services continue to come from the emerging regions of Asia/Pacific (led by Indonesia and India), Greater China and Latin America (led by Argentina, Mexico and Brazil).

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