Worldwide public cloud services revenue reached $45.7 billion (about £26.7 billion, AU$48.8 billion) in 2013, according to an IDC report. IDC expects the market to increase 23% annually through 2018.
Cloud Software spending, which includes Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) represented 86% of the cloud services market in 2013. Cloud Infrastructure, which is solely comprised of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) or server and basic storage solutions, represented 14% of the market.
Enterprise resource management applications provided the most revenue of all cloud-based applications in 2013 with $10.78 billion (about £6.3 billion, AU$11.51 billion) in revenue. This figure comprised roughly 24% of all public cloud services revenue.
CRM applications were responsible for $8.13 billion (about £4.75 billion, AU$8.68 billion) in 2013, or 18% of the total market. The CRM market is projected to increase 20% annually until 2018, according to the report.
The market leaders
SaaS service provider revenue is led by Salesforce.com, according to the report. ADP and Intuit are Salesforce's immediate followers with Oracle and Microsoft ranking fourth and fifth in revenue, respectively.
PaaS revenue is led by Amazon.com. Salesforce and Microsoft were tied for the second-most revenue in the PaaS market in 2013.
Amazon.com, which owns 40% of the IaaS market share, was the leader in the market. RackSpace and IBM follow Amazon with the second and third-largest IaaS market share, respectively.
The US holds 68% of the public cloud services market. Western Europe is the second-largest market with 19%. By 2018, IDC forecasts that the US will lose 9% of the market and Western Europe will gain 4%.
