In a report, analyst firm Gartner said software-as-a-service represented the largest category of cloud services spend in in Australia, but infrastructure services were growing fastest – while the worldwide market for cloud services in 2019 was forecast to climb to US$206.2 billion, up 17.3 % from US$175.8 billion in 2018.

And according to Gartner, cloud providers are expanding across categories as customers demand offerings with more depth and breadth for their hybrid environments.

By 2022, Gartner says it expects that 90% of organisations globally purchasing public cloud IaaS will do so from an integrated IaaS and platform as a service provider – and will use both the IaaS and PaaS capabilities from that provider.

"Demand for integrated IaaS and PaaS offerings is driving the next wave of cloud infrastructure adoption," said Gartner research director Sid Nag.

Australia public cloud service revenue forecast (Millions of A$)

BPaaS = business process as a service; IaaS = infrastructure as a service; PaaS = platform as a service; SaaS = software as a service. Totals may not add up due to rounding.

“We expect that IaaS-only cloud providers will continue to exist in the future, but only as niche players, as organizations will demand offerings with more breadth and depth for their hybrid environments.

“Already, strategic initiatives such as digital transformation projects resulting in the adoption of multicloud and hybrid cloud fuel the growth of the IaaS market."