IDC's Worldwide IT Cloud Services Taxonomy, 2012

This IDC study discusses the IT cloud services market, which continues to grow and evolve at an astonishing rate. New offerings come to market regularly, often defining new functional segments and new deployment options. This study updates IDC's definition of cloud services and the various cloud services deployment models. It also updates and expands IDC's taxonomy of the IT cloud services market.

"This study provides the fourth update of IDC's cloud services taxonomy since 2008," according to IDC SVP and Chief Analyst Frank Gens. "Clients will be glad to know we've maintained strong continuity with our prior taxonomies. But we've also made some major enhancements, including incorporating the widely used NIST taxonomy, adding important categories such as network and client cloud services, and adding a new, strategically important segment called cloud application platforms that defines integrated PaaS platforms such as Google's App Engine, Microsoft's Azure, and salesforce.com's Force.com."