[Forbes] Forrester’s 10 Cloud Computing Predictions For 2018

• Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and Microsoft will capture 76% of all cloud platform revenue in 2018, expanding to 80% by 2020.
• Microsoft Azure Stack sparks a jump in private and hybrid cloud spending globally in 2018.
• The total global public cloud market will be $178B in 2018, up from $146B in 2017, and will continue to grow at a 22% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
• Forrester predicts that more than 50% of global enterprises will rely on at least one public cloud platform to drive digital transformation and delight customers.
• Kubernetes has won the war for container orchestration dominance.
• Enterprises will shift 10% of their traffic from carrier backbones to other providers, and telecom providers like AT&T and Verizon will feel the effects.

These and many other fascinating insights are from Forrester’s Predictions 2018: Cloud Computing Accelerates Enterprise Transformation Everywhere (PDF, 12 pp., client access reqd). Forrester’s predictions reflect the growing dominance of cloud application and development platforms and their role in revolutionizing new business models across enterprises today. Forrester clients no longer questioning whether the cloud is right for their business — they now scramble to decide how soon and how much according to the study.

Key takeaways from Forrester’s 10 Cloud Computing predictions for 2018 include the following:

• The total global public cloud market will be $178B in 2018, up from $146B in 2017, and will continue to grow at a 22% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Public cloud platforms, the fastest growing segment, will generate $44 billion in 2018. By the end of 2017, Forrester expects that half of all global enterprises will rely on public cloud platforms.
• AWS, Google, and Microsoft will capture 76% of all cloud platform revenue in 2018; 80% by 2020. Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce together have a 70% share of all SaaS sales force automation and customer service subscription revenue.
• Forrester predicts SaaS vendors will compete more at the platform level, running portions of their services on Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Oracle Cloud in 2018. Given the increased demands for application customization, combined with the convergence of digital technologies such as IoT and AI, Forrester is predicting that SaaS vendors will de-prioritize their platform efforts to attain global scale and select from AWS, Azure, GCP, or Oracle Cloud. Salesforce is emphasizing platform capabilities that enable Artifical Intelligence (AI), advanced development of its Lightning platform, Cloud, and their rapidly evolving Einstein solution. Like Salesforce, Workday is investing in its platform with greater depth of features. Both companies need a broad public cloud platform capable of scaling fast to support global deployments, which is one of the primary factors that led Salesforce and Workday to choose Amazon AWS to scale global deployments. Forrester predicts this trend will accelerate with other SaaS vendors in 2018.