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Merrill Lynch Estimates "Cloud Computing" To Be $100 Billion Market

Ten Cloud Computing Companies Plus Two "Unconventional Plays"
By Markus Klems
Article Rating:
August 21, 2008 09:51 AM EDT
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 27,555

Marcus Klems' Blog

What do the following companies all have in common: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, EMC, VMware, IBM, Sun, Dell, Akamai, SalesForce.com, NetSuite, and Activision. Answer: Cloud Computing. Merrill Lynch analysts reckon that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity will amount to $160BN, including $95N in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65BN in online advertising.

Merrill Lynch recently issued a research note: “The Cloud Wars: $100+ billion at stake” (07 May 2008). The analysts write that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity would amount to $160bn, including $95bn in business and productivity apps (email, office, CRM, etc.) and $65bn in online advertising.

The authors identify 10 companies + 2 “unconventional plays” with exposure to Cloud Computing growth. I tried to sketch their market position in a diagram (my own interpretation):


Top 10 (+2) Cloud companies

It is interesting that Merrill Lynch researchers added Activision to their top cloud company list. They are absolutely correct, though. If you manage to operate a 10 million WoW gamer user base in a distributed network, you definitely deserve to be in the champions league.

I will pick up other interesting aspects of the note in later blog posts. Comments, ideas?


[This post appeared originally here and is republished in full by kind permission of the author, who retains copyright.]

Published August 21, 2008 – Reads 27,555
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Markus Klems

Markus Klems is a research assistant at Germany-based FZI Research Center for Information Technology. His main areas of interests are cloud computing, grids, distributed programming and agile Web development - the technological point of view as well as business models. He blogs at http://markusklems.wordpress.com/.

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Most Recent Comments
Dean J. Garrett 07/12/08 01:21:23 AM EDT

Merrill Lynch's estimate most likely does not include the rising number of smaller providers entering the SaaS marketplace. For instance, www.HostedDatabase.com, is a product from a small company but offers very simple-to-use template applications. This company along with others aim to compete at the lower end of the spectrum, off the radar of larger players like Salesforce.
Richard Davies 07/07/08 08:34:56 AM EDT

Whilst Amazon, Google, etc. get a lot of the press, there is a good ecosystem of smaller vendors offering cloud computing products - e.g. in the web hosting market these include [http://www.mediatemple.net MediaTemple], [http://www.mosso.com Mosso], [http://www.gogrid.com GoGrid] in the US and [http://www.elastichosts.com ElasticHosts], [http://www.flexiscale.com FlexiScale] in the UK.