IDC's Whole Cloud Strategies is a unique research service that provides a "rolled up" view of the entire cloud services market. It presents IDC's freshest thinking on the "complete" cloud services opportunity, including the implications of hybrid cloud applications, "multicloud" architectures, private cloud delivered in different deployment models, and extending cloud to the edge. It provides a wide-angle complement to other IDC research programs that provide drilldown views of specific cloud markets and topics such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, private clouds, and edge. This program analyzes how quickly cloud services are being adopted across customer segments and the organizational barriers to faster adoption. It also details key customer expectations about cloud benefits/concerns as well as forecasts how cloud will impact vendor business models and service offerings.

Whole Cloud Strategies
Markets and Subjects Analyzed
- The "whole cloud" opportunity — public and private clouds and enabling hardware, software, and services
- The cumulative IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS cloud services market
- Cloud user spending and partnering intentions
- Cloud services adoption and use cases
- Usage behaviors of public cloud service customers
- New business models for the implementation of cloud services, including licensing, pricing, and delivery models as well as budgeting/governance implications for customers
- Changing the competitive landscape for ICT hardware, software, and service providers in a cloud-centric market
- Comparing the levels of competitiveness within different segments of the market and the synergies between these segments
Core Research
- Worldwide "Whole Cloud" Forecast
- Worldwide and Regional Public IT Cloud Services Forecast
- Worldwide and Regional Hosted Private Cloud Services Forecast
- Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Hardware Forecast
- Worldwide Public Cloud Competitive Landscape
- IDC MarketScape for Worldwide IaaS
- Cloud Services Definitions and Taxonomy
- Cloud User Survey Findings and Analysis
- Vendor Strategy Briefs Driven by Events and Announcements
In addition to the insight provided in this service, IDC may conduct research on specific topics or emerging market segments via research offerings that require additional IDC funding and client investment.
Key Questions Answered
- How big are the opportunities emerging around the cloud model (public cloud services, hosted private cloud services, hardware/software for cloud services, and managed and professional services)?
- What are the largest IT public cloud service opportunities?
- What are the emerging customer deployment models, including private, public, and local cloud and multicloud?
- Which customer segments will quickly adopt cloud services, and for which apps/workloads?
- What are the leading vendors providing in terms of cloud services, and how are vendor communities converging?
- How are customer usage patterns/preferences in leading public IaaS/PaaS environments evolving?
- How is cloud investment affecting organizations' investments in traditional IT and legacy systems?
- How will cloud impact hardware, software, and SaaS vendor business models and service offerings?
- What are the key benefits and challenges driving/inhibiting cloud services adoption?
- How are development and deployment architectures evolving to include serverless containers and microservices in application architectures?
Companies Covered
AT&T Inc., Accenture plc, Adobe Systems Inc., Akamai Technologies, Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Limited, Amazon Web Services Inc., Appirio Inc., BMC Software, Inc., Broadcom Inc., Capgemini Services SAS, Cisco Systems Inc., Citrix Systems, Inc., Cloudera, Inc., Compuware Corporation, DXC Technology Co., Dell Technologies Inc., Deloitte LLP, EDS Holding, ENKI Consulting, Elastra Kattematerjali AS, Equinix Inc., FlexiScale Technologies Ltd, Fujitsu Limited, GitHub Inc., GoGrid LLC, Google LLC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hitachi Vantara LLC, IBM, Intel Corporation, Intuit Inc., Joyent, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., Kenexa Corporation, Keynote Systems, Inc., Lumen Technologies, MEEZA, Microsoft Corporation, NetApp, Inc., New Relic, Inc., Novell, Inc., OpSource, Inc., Oracle Corporation, Oracle NetSuite, Pivotal Software, Inc., Platform Computing Inc, Rackspace Technology Global, Inc., Red Hat, Inc., Rightscale Inc., SAP SE, SOASTA, Inc., Salesforce.com, Inc., ServiceNow, Inc., Skytap, Inc., Symantec Corporation, TIBCO Software Inc., TRITON, Tencent Holdings Limited, UFIDA Network Technology Co., Ltd., Unisys Corporation, VMware, Inc., Verizon Communications, Inc., Workday, Inc., Zetta, Inc., Zoho Corporation Pvt. Ltd.