Not only is coronavirus dominating the headlines across the media at the moment, but it also has everyday life firmly in its grip. A shutdown of business and restrictions on going out are leaving little room for manoeuvre. This has led to social and working life taking place largely on the internet. Whether communication, online trading, video games or the home office, the pandemic is making the world even more digital. Experts reckon this could accelerate the long-term trend. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, for instance, anticipates that the crisis will deliver a massive boost to technological innovation. Among the solutions the billionaire expects to see are virtual courtrooms and investor meetings held in front of a screen. If the flood of data is to be managed, the cloud is the only option. Not only does this type of digital infrastructure make storage space available at all times, but it also allows any terminal device to access countless software programs at any time.
The cloud was already a mega-trend before coronavirus appeared. The market can be divided into a number of segments: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) – the spectrum of the data cloud is enormous. As is its growth: Gartner believes the global market for public cloud services will climb 17% to USDbn 266.4 this year. "From now on the use of cloud is mainstream," says Sid Nag, Research Vice President at Gartner. According to the market researchers, SaaS remains the largest segment and will appreciate to USDbn 116 this year due to the scalability of subscription software. IaaS, though, looks likely to continue as the forerunner when it comes to growth. Gartner expects this segment to swell by 24% in 2020 compared with last year. All the signs point to expansion in the next few years, too: by 2022, the global volume is set to expand to USDbn 354.6, which equates to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.9% between 2018 and 2022. View more information on investment solutions on the topic “The world in a cloud”.
The success of the cloud is closely associated with data security. In recent years, however, cloud providers have invested massively in protection, largely allaying the security concerns previously held. This should continue to be the case in the future, especially as hacker attacks on the cloud are also constantly increasing. That the cloud security subsegment is likewise going to be an important issue going forward is something that market researcher Mordor Intelligence has established. The market for cloud security software, for instance, is predicted to reach a value of USDbn 37.4 by 2025, rising by a CAGR of just under 5% in the 2020 to 2025 forecast period. Fortinet is among the important players in the market. The US group describes itself as the leading provider of multi-cloud security. Fortinet collaborates with all major cloud providers such as Alibaba, Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
Number one by some distance on the cloud market is Amazon. With its Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform, the e-commerce giant accounted for a 33% share of the cloud infrastructure services market in the last quarter of 2019, according to Statista. That puts Amazon well ahead of Microsoft, which occupies second place with a market share of 18%. When looking at growth rates, though, the picture is rather different: while AWS rose 34% in the fourth quarter of 2019, the software colossus from Redmond posted 62% growth in sales with Azure. The industry behemoths are also earning good money with the cloud: in the fourth quarter Amazon achieved an operating result of USDbn 2.7 in its AWS segment, up a fifth by comparison with the previous year. Every fourth dollar in sales from the cloud was retained as profit.
View more information on investment solutions on the topic “The world in a cloud”.
