Enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management services make up a majority of cloud spending worldwide, according to figures from IDC.
The figures, compiled from IDC’s Worldwide Semi-annual Public Cloud Services Tracker, show the worldwide market for cloud services hit $US45.7 billion ($A48.7b) during 2013. Of that total, $US10.78 billion (24%) was spent on ERP systems and $US8.13 billion (18%) was spent on CRM.
ERP systems (such as SAP, Oracle or Microsoft Dynamics AX) are integrated whole-of-business management applications integrating accounting, payroll, manufacturing, supply chain management and project management. Meanwhile, CRM software (such as Salesforce) manages customer relationships.
Other major cloud-based service categories included servers at $US3.981 billion or 9% of the market, collaborative applications (such as Office 365) at $US3.37 billion, and security software at $US2.922 billion.
The strength of ERP and CRM spending meant the Software-as-a-Service model accounted for 72% of the market, with Platform-as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service making up 14% each.
Salesforce, ADP and Intuit dominate the SaaS market; Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft, GXS and Google are the largest PaaS competitors; while Amazon, RackSpace and IBM lead the IaaS market.
You can help us (and help yourself)
Small and medium businesses and startups have never needed credible, independent journalism and information more than now.
That’s our job at SmartCompany: to keep you informed with the news, interviews and analysis you need to manage your way through this unprecedented crisis.
Now, there’s a way you can help us keep doing this: by becoming a SmartCompany supporter.
Even a small contribution will help us to keep doing the journalism that keeps Australia’s entrepreneurs informed.
