Gartner: Public Cloud Revenue to Post Limited Gains in 2020

Gartner forecasts the worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 6.3% in 2020 to a total $257.9 billion, up from $242.7 billion in 2019.

Desktop as a service (DaaS) is expected to have the most significant growth in 2020, increasing 95.4% to $1.2 billion. DaaS offers an inexpensive option for enterprises that are supporting the surge of remote workers and their need to securely access enterprise applications from multiple devices and locations.

“When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there were a few initial hiccups but cloud ultimately delivered exactly what it was supposed to,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner. “It responded to increased demand and catered to customers’ preference of elastic, pay-as-you-go consumption models.”

Software as a service (SaaS) remains the largest market segment and is forecast to grow to $104.7 billion in 2020. The second-largest market segment is cloud system infrastructure services, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which is forecast to grow 13.4% to $50.4 billion in 2020.

Cloud spending in many regions is expected to grow rapidly as economies reopen and more normal economic activity resumes, with regions such as North America expecting to return to higher spending levels as early as 2022.

Channel Impact^®
Key advantages of public cloud services include the enhanced ability to link costs with actual usage rates, along with the ability to defer spending while also using an opex model. The market researcher says that, for the remainder of 2020, organizations that expand remote work functionality will prioritize collaboration software, mobile device management, distance learning educational solutions and security, as well as the infrastructure to scale to support increased capacity.