Cloud Stats

Information regarding cloud computing adoption and market sizing in general varies wildly from one analyst to another, and from vendor to vendor. As descriptors of the "cloud market", this information is not terribly reliable. This goal of this page is to post relevant information on the interest in cloud related searches and to try to provide some light analysis.

For example: the information provided by Google Insights shows a clear trend in the increase in interest in cloud computing as evidenced by the embedded chart below.


Clearly, searches have declined as cloud is now widely understood as a business tool and future versions of this analysis will no longer include "cloud computing" specifically.

Worldwide IaaS Search Result
Interestingly, while the trend for "cloud computing" searches has dropped, searches for "IaaS" have remained strong but appear to be reaching a plateau of sorts.

http://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=iaas, prepared January 15, 2016.

The increase in search for "infrastructure as a service" was roughly timed with the hit of the recession in 2008, which appears to have been the tipping point, but IaaS is nearing, if not already, wide acceptance in IT. 

Worldwide PaaS Search Result
"PaaS" has always had regular spikes in search activity but does not appear to be slowing down as IaaS is. (The term used for PaaS was "Platform as a Service".)


Interestingly, "platform as a service" somewhat mirrors IaaS above but interest starts more than a full year earlier.

Worldwide SaaS Search Result
Of the three service models, SaaS seems to have the most variability in interest as depicted by search trends. It starts off very jagged but smooths out towards 2011 onward and especially sometime after 2013 on the graph. The reason is not readily apparent but it may be that this is simply a cue that SaaS has reached its information limit.


SaaS is, of course, the most heavily adopted of the three cloud computing service models but what was surprising was how much earlier than IaaS and PaaS it generated interest. Likely due to the influence of service providers like SalesForce.com.

Composite Graph
One issue that arises when comparing these graphs is that there is no y-axis label or scale by which to gauge the number of searches over time. The only way to do so is to graph the four data sets on the same chart.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=cloud%20computing%2C%20iaas%2C%20%22platform%20as%20a%20service%22%2C%20saas&cmpt=q, prepared January 15, 2016.

Compared with the last graph I posted dated January 4, 2015, there hasnnt been much change in the shapes and positioning of the curves.

Cloud Management
Because of this, a new term was included: "Cloud Management". The idea here was to see if there was an evolution in searches to indicate that adopters were now looking for tools to manage their clouds.


Indeed, this does appear to be the case as the graph shows a steady increase from 2007 onwards and looks very much like the PaaS graph above. Unfortunately, that's where the interest ends because it doesn't seem to affect the relative shape and positioning of the curves in the composite graph above.