Introduction

The cloud market maintained momentum across offerings, deals, alliances, partnerships, and M&As. The quarter witnessed strong adoption by the mature technology vertical as well as traction in emerging verticals such as retail and public services.

North America remained the epicenter of most enterprise cloud activity, while Europe witnessed an uncharacteristic decline as compared to previous quarters. Asia Pacific witnessed a sizeable uptick, garnering nearly one-fourth of the deal volume.

Specialists players such as NTT Communications, NetApp, NetSuite, and Amazon Web Services, as well as conventional IT service providers, such as IBM, HP, and Accenture, remained buoyant on the enterprise cloud market, leading to sustained activity.

There were two major acquisitions in the market – Oracle-MICROS and Atos-Bull – totaling over US$6 billion alone. This capped a period of prolonged absence of big-ticket M&As, reflective of the confirmation of long-term growth in the enterprise cloud market.

Service providers sharpened their focus on enhancing capabilities in line with the movement towards software-defined world. There was substantial movement across next-generation areas, such as mobility, analytics, and consumer engagement, as consumption/dissemination models evolve and enterprises adapt to the ‘’new normal’’.