SaaS Still Biggest Public Cloud Revenue Driver but PaaS Grows Fastest

End-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 23.1 percent in 2021 to $332  billion, up from $270 billion in 2020, says Gartner.

Software as a service (SaaS) will remain the largest market segment at $122.6 billion in 2021. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will grow about 39 percent; desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) will grow at 68 percent. 

Worldwide Public Cloud Services End-User Spending Forecast ($ Millions)
Service	2020	2021	2022
Cloud Business Process Services (BPaaS)	46,131	50,165	53,121
Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS)	46,335	59,451	71,525
Cloud Application Services (SaaS)	102,798	122,633	145,377
Cloud Management and Security Services	14,323	16,029	18,006
Cloud System Infrastructure Services (IaaS)	59,225	82,023	106,800
Desktop as a Service (DaaS)	1,220	2,046	2,667
Total Market	270,033	332,349	397,496

BPaaS = business process as a service; IaaS = infrastructure as a service; PaaS = platform as a service; SaaS = software as a service; DaaS = desktop as a service

source: Gartner