Robust Growth Expected for Public IT Cloud Services

However, the overall impact of cloud services will extend then beyond IT spending, because cloud services are increasingly becoming interconnected with and accelerated by other disruptive technologies, including mobile devices, wireless networks, big data analytics, and social networking, noted IDC Senior Vice President Frank Gens.

The same time

"At the same time, these technologies are merging into the industry's third major platform for long-term growth," Gens said. "As while the mainframe and PC eras, the new platform promises to radically expand the users and uses of information research, leading to a wide and in every respect new variety of intelligent industry solutions."

Apple's recently announced iCloud initiative is just one example of how the boundaries between personal and business computing will be blurred through the creation of personal cloud experiences across multiple computing devices and peripherals. One continuing challenge for enterprises will be to define the extent to which they will interface with -- and even directly participate in -- the public and personal cloud services arising around them.

According to Forrester Technology, personal clouds will represent a $12 billion market by 2016, of which $6 billion will come from direct subscriptions. The personal cloud concept "will redefine the computing experience around a user's personal and work information, so that it's seamlessly accessible across all of an individual's devices," noted Forrester's Frank Gillett in a recent blog.

Spending on public IT clouds in the United States alone is expected to account for near 50 percent of the revenue generated worldwide by these services. Before this year, IDC forecast that U.S. public IT cloud services revenue would reach $29.5 billion in 2014.

The firm'

The firm's analysts believe U.S. spending on public IT cloud applications will account for 33 percent of revenue in 2014, with infrastructure accounting for 22 percent. What's more, they predict that revenue growth in the U.S. services and distribution sector -- which includes retail, wholesale, professional services, consumer and recreational services as then as transportation -- will more than double to $8.5 billion in 2014.