India public cloud services market to touch USD 7.4 bn by 2024: IDC

Indias public cloud services PCS market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.2 per cent to touch USD 7.4 billion by 2024, research firm IDC said on Friday. India PCS market, which includes infrastructure-as-a-service IaaS, platform-as-a-service PaaS solutions and software-as-a-service SaaS, touched USD 1.6 billion for the first half of 2020, it added.The current uncertainty has accelerated the demand for public cloud services.

India's public cloud services (PCS) market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.2 per cent to touch USD 7.4 billion by 2024, research firm IDC said on Friday. India PCS market, which includes infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions and software-as-a-service (SaaS), touched USD 1.6 billion for the first half of 2020, it added.

''The current uncertainty has accelerated the demand for public cloud services. Getting to the 'next normal' entails businesses to leverage cloud as part of their business plans,'' IDC India Principal Analyst (Cloud and Artificial Intelligence) Rishu Sharma said. Enterprises across verticals like financial services, IT/ITeS, media, education, among others, are witnessing a surge in demand, Sharma added.

IDC said the spending continues to solidify with the top two cloud providers, capturing close to 52 per cent of the Indian public cloud services market in the first half of 2020. From a segment perspective, SaaS forms the largest component of the overall public cloud services market, with over 63 per cent of the overall market in H1 2020, followed by IaaS and PaaS segment, it added.

The public cloud services market has nearly tripled since 2016. As businesses focus on gaining agility, flexibility, and resilience, reliance on cloud platforms and infrastructure as well as software as a service will become pivotal. Although most organisations in India have adopted cloud in some stage, the current pandemic situation has now enabled organisations to rely on public cloud IaaS and PaaS to expedite the development process and deployment of business applications, IDC said.

IDC India Senior Market Analyst Harish Krishnakumar said enterprises which adopted cloud and other digital technologies fared better than enterprises with traditional IT systems during the pandemic, thereby stressing the urgent need for digital transformation. During the pandemic, there has been an increase in demand for cloud-based collaboration tools, content management solutions, and online streaming platforms, he added.

''We are witnessing demand from large enterprises, tech start-ups and government institutions. The pandemic, along with investments from tech giants is expected to propel the adoption of cloud among SMBs,'' he said.