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IDC reveals in a report that the cloud software market reached $48.8 billion in revenue in 2014 (a 24.4% growth from the year ago) and is projected to be worth in excess of $112 billion by 2019. SaaS (Software as a Service) will play an instrumental role, outpacing traditional software product delivery by a rate of 5-to1. $1 of every $4.59 spent on software will directed at the cloud software model, IDC predicts.

The analytics firm sounds the horn on a huge opportunity, advising all major IT product vendors to put this strategic goal at the top of their to-do lists: figure out how to capitalize on the cloud services transformation. However, CIOs and IT reps at various cloud-centric companies seem to be fully aware that the doors to service heaven are wide open.

Predictability, OpEx, security, scalability

CIO.com picked the brains of a few IT leaders in a recent poll and found that most of them are on par with the notion that IT spending must and will increase in areas like SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, and hybrid cloud infrastructures. For example, Gerard Verwiej, Principal of PwC, and Corey Nachreiner, CTO of WatchGuard Technologies, both believe that the move towards cloud will offer predictability of spend coupled with the benefits of OpEx expenditures.

Justin Giardina, CIO of iland, offered his take on the security benefits, a highly debatable topic in the cloud world. According to Giardina, “Seven or eight years ago, many companies were skeptical of cloud, but now that it has been proven to be safe and effective, they are reducing spending on datacenter hardware and putting more resources toward cloud infrastructure.” Infrastructure-as-a-service and disaster-recovery-as-a-service are the new areas worth spending in to secure data.

Scott Gilgallon, VP Channels & Business Development of Appcara, agrees that 2016 will see a rise in multi-cloud adoption and multi-cloud application management, as service providers have proven the cost efficiency, security, scalability and mobility of cloud computing. For the full list of impressions from select IT leaders, visit the original CIO report.