Desktop as a service expected to grow by 95% globally, says Gartner

As remote working becomes the new norm, Desktop as a service (DaaS) is expected to grow worldwide by 95% in 2020 with projected revenue growth of $1.2 billion, up from $616 million in 2019, says a study by Gartner, a global research and advisory firm.

According to Gartner, DaaS is a more cost effective option for enterprises that are working on supporting remote workers and their need to securely access enterprise applications from anywhere. The revenue for 2021 and 2022 is projected to grow to $1.9 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively.

The overall global public cloud services market is expected to grow by 6.3% in 2020, with revenue of $257.9 billion, up from $242.7 billion last year, Gartner said.

Cloud spending is expected to grow quickly across the world as many countries have resumed their normal economic activity with new social distancing norms. As per Gartner, North America expected to return to higher spending levels by 2022.

"When the covid-19 pandemic hit, there were a few initial hiccups but cloud ultimately delivered exactly what it was supposed to. It responded to increased demand and catered to customers’ preference of elastic, pay-as-you-go consumption models," Sid Nag, research vice president, Gartner said in a statement.

Though DaaS is expected to grow fastest, Software as a service (SaaS) remains the largest market segment with expected revenue of $104.7 billion in 2020. The growth in SaaS was driven by the shift from on-premises license software to subscription-based SaaS models and demand for collaboration tools.

The demand for Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is also expected to grow with revenue to grow by 13.4% from $44 billion in 2019 to $50.4 billion in 2020. Due to the economic downturn, organizations are looking to shift legacy infrastructure operating models.

Nag points out, any debate around the use of public cloud has been put aside since the onset of covid-19. For the remainder of 2020, organizations that expand remote work functionality will focus more on collaboration software, mobile device management, distance learning educational solutions and security. The infrastructure to scale to support increased capacity will also get priority.