This IDC study provides 2011–2015 forecast for the worldwide public cloud application platform market. This is a competitive market that reports revenue for vendor products that in either an integrated or a suite fashion meet IDC's definition for a cloud application platform.

We expect to see strong growth over the entire forecast period for public cloud application platforms, although 2011 will be something of a disappointment because of the challenges of delivering automated provisioning, dynamic scalability, and multitenancy for consumption in a public cloud. These features are all core to a public cloud application platform and require significant R&D work that is delaying the general availability of many vendor products until 2012.

"Despite the 'off' year that is expected in 2011, the public cloud application platform forecast is expected to reach $2.1 billion by 2015, which reflects a CAGR of 34.2% over the forecast period." — Stephen D. Hendrick, group vice president of Application Development and Deployment research