Public Cloud Services Revenue Growth Remains Strong in 1H17

The worldwide public cloud services market grew 28.6% year over year in the first half of 2017 (1H17) with revenues totaling $63.2 billion, according to new results from IDC. The revenue total for the first half of the year was slightly ahead of IDC's forecast.

While stronger than expected growth was seen across all regions, Asia/Pacific saw the highest regional growth at 38.9% and Asia/Pacific now represents 11.5% of all public cloud services revenues. A big part of this was driven by strong public cloud spending in China, which saw 55.6% year-over-year growth in the first half of 2017. Among the three primary segments of public cloud services (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS), the SaaS segment, which holds 68.7% of overall market share, was the slowest growing segment with a 22.9% year-over-year growth rate.

The smallest segment was PaaS with a 13.6% of the public cloud services market. However, the PaaS market continues to deliver stronger growth than the other two segments at 50.2% year over year in 1H17. The IaaS segment represented 17.8% of the public cloud services market in the first half of 2017 and continues to exhibit strong year-over-year growth at 38.1%.

Amazon Web Services leads this segment in market share and growth. In addition, the last three years have seen a resurgence of focus on public cloud IaaS by major technology companies. Notable among these are major North American technology players like Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM; as well as Asia/Pacific-based providers such as Fujitsu, Alibaba, and Huawei.