Enterprises will spend more than US$235 billion on cloud architecture and services by 2017 — a 35 percent gain from the US$174 billion projected to be spent this year.

“Enterprises today are trying to create faster, more efficient I.T. environments to ensure more responsive, agile and successful businesses,” said Jagdish Rebello, senior director for information technology at IHS. "In these cloud-based settings, enterprises also want to integrate the deep analytical power of big data, which will give them competitive advantages through insights about present and prospective customers."

Enterprises are simultaneously augmenting their on-site services and capabilities with the cloud and gradually transferring those functions to online competencies, noted IHS.



The main focus for many companies is developing initially limited sets of new apps and services that will live only in the cloud before the new offerings skyrocket in terms of adoption, according to Rebello.

Just last month, Cisco pledged to spend over US$1 billion entering the cloud computing market in order to offer corporate clients the same services as rival firms. This came just weeks after IBM announced it was planning to spend a similar sum on software and services — a very large chunk of which was to go on its SoftLayer Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud offering.