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

Ten Cloud Computing Companies Plus Two "Unconventional Plays"

Aug. 21, 2008 09:51 AM

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 Aug. 21, 2008— Reads 43,155 — Feedback 2
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

Related Stories

▪ What is Cloud Computing?

▪ Cloud Computing Journal: Current Themes & Topics

▪ Cloud Computing: The Business of Building Clouds

▪ Cloud Computing: The Geopolitical Cloud

▪ Cloud Computing: It's the Future of Enterprise IT

▪ Understanding "Clouded" Terms of Cloud Computing

▪ Do You Really Want Your Data in the Cloud?

▪ Cloud Computing: I Want To Have My Cake and Eat It Too

▪ Cloud Computing: Making Analytics in the Cloud a Reality

▪ RightScale CTO to Present at SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo

▪ Nirvanix CEO to Present at SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo

▪ Cloud Computing - Morgan Stanley is Banking on the Cloud

▪ Cloud Computing vs. Elastic Cloud: What's the Difference?

▪ Cloud Computing and the "Cloud Dining" Analogy

▪ Cloud Computing - The User-Friendly Version of Grid Computing

▪ Defining Cloud Computing

▪ Cloud Computing: AT&T Joins Google, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Intel, Dell and HP

▪ Cloud Computing: "Cloud Thinking" Abounds at Microsoft, Sun and Dell

▪ Cloud Computing - AT&T Takes to the Cloud

▪ Opinion: Cloud Computing Makes Me Nervous

▪ Is Cloud Computing Right For You?

▪ Are Enterprises Ready for Cloud Computing?

▪ Cloud Security: The Need for Two-Factor Authentication in Cloud Computing

▪ Cloud Computing: The On-Demand Model Has Been Available for a While

▪ Cloud Computing Expo: How to Port an Application to EC2

▪ Cloud Computing - Game Changing?

▪ Development Tools For Cloud Computing

▪ Amazon’s Elastic Block Store Opens Up S3 and The Cloud

▪ A Brief History of Cloud Computing: Is the Cloud There Yet?

▪ Joyent CEO to Present on "The Open Cloud" at SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo

▪ Cloud Computing: Creating a Generic (Internal) Cloud Architecture

▪ Creating a Common Cloud Computing Reference API - Part Two

▪ Creating a Common Cloud Computing Reference API - Part One

▪ Cloud Computing and Reliability

▪ Cloud Computing: The Rise of Cloud Platforms and Why the OS Doesn’t Matter

▪ Cloud Computing: CDI - Desktops in the Cloud

▪ Cloud Computing: First-Hand Stories and Use Cases

▪ Microsoft's Cloud Platform Vision is Coming Together

▪ Virtualization Is Not Cloud Computing

▪ Cloud Computing Will Eventually Require Orchestration

▪ The Rise and Rise of Cloud Computing

▪ Is Cloud Computing the Wave of the Future?

▪ Cloud Computing: Securing the Cloud

▪ Can Google Chrome Bring Cloud Computing to the Masses?

▪ Google Chrome and Business Intelligence in the Cloud

▪ Six Benefits of Cloud Computing

▪ Citrix CEO "The Industry Needs Time"

About 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/.

Your Feedback

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

Dean J. Garrett wrote: 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.

read more & respond »

SOA World Latest Stories

Cloud Computing: Yahoo-Alibaba Talks Reportedly Collapse

By Maureen O'Gara

Yahoo’s critical negotiations with Alibaba to sell part of its stake in Alibaba back to the Chinese company have collapsed according to All Things Digital, a report later confirmed by CNBC. Apparently the collapse includes Yahoo’s parallel and intertwined negotiations with Softbank t...

Bringing Cloud to the Business at Cloud Expo New York

By Elizabeth White

Can you bring services from the cloud to your customers faster and have them adopt it with ease of use or bring the power of bundled services to the fingertips of your clients without creating new rigid ‘apps stove pipes'? Do you want to prevent your business running away to public and...

More Mobile Devices than People Soon: Cisco

By Maureen O'Gara

The Internet highway may start looking like a proverbial New York traffic jam at rush hour soon. Feel free to substitute any town you like because Cisco says there’s going to be a faster-than-expected 18x surge in worldwide mobile data traffic between 2011 and 2016. That’s when mob...

OCZ Launches Z-Drive R4 CloudServ PCI Express

By Pat Romanski

OCZ Technology Group, a provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, on Tuesday announced the Z-Drive R4 CloudServ PCI Express (PCIe) flash storage solution, designed to accelerate cloud computing applications and reduce operating expenses i...

Cloud Expo New York: The Compliant Cloud

By Liz McMillan

Many organizations have embraced, or are considering, the benefits of cloud computing – speed, flexibility, increased expertise, shared workload, reduced costs, etc. The benefits are many – but so are the risks. What are the threats to cloud security? Which parties assume responsibilit...

SoftLayer Introduces Searchable Object Storage

By Liz McMillan

SoftLayer Technologies on Tuesday announced the immediate worldwide availability of SoftLayer Object Storage, a redundant and highly scalable cloud storage service that allows users to easily store, search and retrieve data across the Internet, with optional CDN connectivity, or across...