The EMEA public cloud services market, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS), is projected to generate $203 billion in revenue for 2024, and is expected to reach $415.1 billion in 2028, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20%, according to the latest figures from IDC.
► Market expected to reach $415 billion by 2028
► SaaS remains biggest segment with PaaS growing fastest
SaaS continues to be the largest cloud deployment category and is expected to make up 64.4% of the total public cloud services market in 2024. Due to its size and maturity, SaaS is experiencing the slowest rate of growth among the different deployment models. PaaS is the fastest-growing segment, with a projected CAGR of 29.3% for 2023–2028, followed by IaaS with a CAGR of 21.6%.
The increased adoption of AI, particularly generative AI (GenAI), combined with ongoing investments in cloud datacentres by global cloud service providers across EMEA, is driving the overall demand. Both end users and technology providers are investing in AI-ready infrastructures and platforms. IDC said that global tech companies will continue to invest in GenAI, embedding more features and functionalities into their existing portfolios. This will create additional opportunities for growth in the IaaS and PaaS markets, boosting adoption of such services across the EMEA region.
‘As enterprises adopt GenAI to gain a competitive advantage, the need for scalable, on-demand infrastructure continues to rise’, said Manish Ranjan, research director for software and cloud at IDC EMEA. ‘High-performing compute resources, such as GPUs and other accelerated computing, are essential for running AI/GenAI workloads. Public cloud service providers are becoming the primary entry point, offering the necessary infrastructure to support GenAI initiatives without significant up-front investments.’
Western Europe dominates the EMEA market, accounting for over 80% of its revenue. Germany, the U.K., France, and Italy remain the key destinations for cloud investments. However, global hyperscalers like Google, AWS, Microsoft, and Oracle are aggressively expanding their cloud regions in Finland, Greece, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Spain, boosting cloud adoption across Europe.
