Cloud services are platforms and programs that “live” and work on the servers of special companies – cloud providers. These programs do not need to be installed on your computer and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud – we all use these and similar products for a long time, without even realizing that they are in the clouds. It makes no sense to keep files on your own computer, it is much easier to store data and work with them on convenient and secure cloud platforms. Now more and more companies are thinking about the need for services of cloud migration company.

What are they like?

Key cloud services can be represented as a pyramid. At the lowest level is IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) – these are servers, storage, networks, computing infrastructure that the cloud provider provides for use. Relatively speaking, this is just an empty warehouse for rent. IaaS examples – IBM Softlayer, Hetzner Cloud, Amazon EC2.

The middle tier hosts PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), a platform for self-service development and deployment of applications. This is already a warehouse with racks and equipment for loading its goods. PaaS examples: Google App Engine, IBM Bluemix, Microsoft Azure, VMWare Cloud Foundry.

And at the highest – SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), which is made up of ready-made cloud applications with access via a web interface. This is a product on the shelf of our cloud warehouse. SaaS examples: Google Drive, Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox.

More money is spinning in the SaaS segment: in 2018 it amounted to $80 billion (out of $182.4 billion of the global cloud market). The second place was occupied by the IaaS segment, in the last place – PaaS.

In the early 2000s, Amazon, which was then known to everyone as an online bookstore, offered its customers to host data on remote servers, without involving their own infrastructure and equipment. The idea was picked up and developed by Google, IBM, and other technology giants. The next 18 years of technology development were spent in the constant improvement of cloud products. The developers competed in the ability to create the most effective programs for organizing a virtual IT infrastructure. Cloud computing spending has grown faster than expected and is not going to stop in the coming years.

Amazon’s idea turned out to be more than successful. In 2012, the global cloud services market amounted to $26.4 billion. In 2019, it will grow almost 10 times, and by 2026 – almost 20 times, up to $521.8 billion.

The global cloud services market is concentrated around three IT giants: Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, which occupy 70% of the IaaS market. Amazon and Microsoft services are used by US and European companies. In China, the market is almost completely monopolized by the local provider Alibaba Cloud.

American companies are spending more money on clouds

At the end of 2020, American businesses spent $97 billion on clouds, more than 60% of the total global market. In second place is the UK with $7.9 billion, followed by Germany ($7.4 billion). Japan and China lead the Asian market.

In Europe, the cloud market is very unevenly distributed and there is trend for cloud costs optimization. The developed economies of Western Europe spend many times more on clouds than their Eastern counterparts. According to the analytical company Forrester Research, in 2019 the cloud market in Western Europe amounted to $24.1 billion, in Eastern Europe – only $1.15 billion.