This article is based on analysis and forecasts published around early 2019. The original piece drew on research from Gartner, RightScale, LogicMonitor, IDG, and KPMG. Original source: analyticsinsight.net.
The State of Enterprise Cloud Heading into 2019
By the start of 2019, enterprise cloud computing had moved far beyond its origins as a simple server hosting platform. Driven by digital transformation initiatives, cloud adoption was accelerating across organizations of every size. Analyst firm Gartner projected the worldwide public cloud market would grow 17.3%, reaching approximately $206.2 billion in 2019—a figure that reflected both expanding workload migration and the proliferation of cloud-native services.
A LogicMonitor survey from that period identified digital transformation as the primary driver behind public cloud engagement, with the same research forecasting that 41% of all enterprise workloads would run on public cloud platforms by 2020. When public, private, and hybrid deployments were counted together, roughly 83% of enterprises were expected to rely on cloud infrastructure by the end of the decade.
The IDG 2018 Cloud Computing Survey added further weight to these projections, reporting that 73% of organizations had already shifted mission-critical workloads and computing infrastructure into the public cloud, while approximately 17% planned a full migration to public cloud platforms within the year.
Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Solutions Dominate Enterprise Strategy
A full lift-and-shift to a single public cloud proved difficult and costly for most enterprises. Hybrid cloud—combining the scalability of public cloud with the control of on-premises or private infrastructure—emerged as the pragmatic middle path. It allowed organizations to migrate resources incrementally, manage risk, and maintain compliance requirements for sensitive workloads.
At the same time, enterprises were not confining themselves to a single vendor. According to the RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud Survey, 81% of enterprises had adopted a multi-cloud strategy, spreading workloads across providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. This vendor diversification reduced lock-in risk and allowed teams to select best-of-breed services for specific use cases.
The practical outcome was a cloud architecture for most large organizations that blended on-premises infrastructure, private cloud resources, and multiple public cloud vendors—a pattern that has only deepened in the years since.
Cloud Service Models: SaaS, IaaS, and BPaaS Growth Projections
Gartner’s worldwide public cloud service revenue forecast for 2019 broke down growth expectations by service model:
- IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) was the fastest-growing segment, with projected growth of 27.6%, expected to reach approximately $39.5 billion in revenue.
- SaaS (Software as a Service) remained the largest segment overall, with 17.8% projected growth to reach roughly $85.1 billion.
- BPaaS (Business Process as a Service) was forecast to achieve around 7.9% growth, reaching approximately $50.3 billion.
A KPMG report titled Journey to the Cloud projected that enterprise investments in PaaS (Platform as a Service) would grow to 56% in 2019. Together, these forecasts pointed to a cloud services market expanding in both breadth and depth, with enterprises consuming a broader mix of delivery models rather than converging on a single one.
GDPR and the Intensifying Focus on Cloud Security
Security consistently ranked as the top concern for enterprises moving workloads to public cloud platforms—a finding LogicMonitor reported in its research. The introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018 significantly raised the stakes. With substantial fines for non-compliance and breach notification requirements, organizations operating in or serving customers in the EU had strong regulatory incentives to audit their cloud security posture.
Key security considerations for enterprise cloud teams in 2019 included:
- Data residency and sovereignty — ensuring data was stored and processed in jurisdictions that met GDPR requirements.
- Shared responsibility clarity — understanding where the cloud provider’s security obligations ended and the customer’s began.
- Access management — enforcing least-privilege access controls, multi-factor authentication, and robust identity management across multi-cloud environments.
- Breach detection and response — implementing monitoring and incident response plans aligned with GDPR’s 72-hour breach notification window.
While major cloud vendors incorporate enterprise-grade security capabilities into their platforms, compliance responsibility under GDPR ultimately rests with the data controller—typically the enterprise itself. CIOs and security architects needed to verify that their chosen platforms and configurations genuinely met regulatory requirements, not simply assume vendor defaults were sufficient.
Quantum Computing: Edging Toward Enterprise Relevance
Quantum computing was a major topic of discussion heading into 2019, even if commercially viable enterprise applications remained years away. Several technology companies had made notable investments and announced concrete milestones:
- IBM had released a 20-qubit quantum system in 2017 and made it accessible to researchers via IBM Q Experience.
- Alibaba, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, had developed an 11-qubit quantum computing system.
- Intel, Microsoft, and Google were all actively investing in quantum hardware and algorithms research.
The most compelling near-term opportunity lay in the intersection of quantum computing and cloud infrastructure. If cloud providers could offer quantum processing as a cloud service, enterprises could access quantum capabilities for specific computationally intensive problems—such as optimization, cryptographic research, molecular simulation for drug discovery, or financial modeling—without needing to own or operate quantum hardware directly.
In 2019, quantum cloud computing was still largely experimental, but the trajectory was clearly set toward offering it as a managed cloud service, a direction AWS (Braket), IBM (Q Network), and Microsoft (Azure Quantum) would all pursue in subsequent years.
What These Trends Meant for CIOs and DevOps Teams
The convergence of these trends placed clear demands on enterprise technology leaders and engineering teams:
- Adopt a multi-cloud architecture mindset — design systems to be portable and interoperable across providers rather than deeply coupled to a single vendor’s proprietary services.
- Treat security as a first-class engineering concern — bake compliance requirements such as GDPR into cloud architecture decisions from the start, not as an afterthought.
- Evaluate the full spectrum of service models — IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and BPaaS each offer different trade-offs in control, cost, and operational overhead; choose per use case rather than defaulting to a single model.
- Monitor emerging capabilities — quantum computing and AI-powered cloud services were beginning to move from research labs toward early commercial availability, and staying informed positioned teams to evaluate them when ready.
Summary
The enterprise cloud landscape entering 2019 was characterized by rapid adoption, increasing architectural complexity, and mounting regulatory pressure. Hybrid and multi-cloud strategies emerged as the dominant approach, cloud service revenues across IaaS, SaaS, and BPaaS were on strong growth trajectories, GDPR was forcing a more rigorous approach to cloud security, and quantum computing was transitioning from research curiosity to a nascent cloud service category. For organizations that engaged thoughtfully with these trends, 2019 offered a genuine opportunity to mature their cloud strategy and build a more resilient, capable infrastructure for the years ahead.