Parks Associates: 'Huge' Market for Cloud-based Storage Services

A new report from market research company Parks Associates showed that there is a “huge addressable market” for cloud-based storage services in 2015.

The report, titled “Converging Clouds: The Next Step for the Personal Cloud,” revealed 62 percent of U.S. broadband households never back up their data to an online storage service, despite options that are available from companies such as Acronis, Backblaze and Carbonite (CARB).

Also, Parks Associates found that consumer consumption of digital content is on the rise, which could drive the demand for cloud-based storage services.

“Integrating cloud storage into current services makes them easier to use,” Parks Associates Research Analyst Glenn Hower told MSPmentor. “There is potential for device makers and [managed] service providers (MSPs) to implement vertical solutions and added services, including cloud storage, that may lead to stickiness.”

Hower said he believes the rising demand for mobile solutions could lead more consumers to leverage cloud-based storage services as well.

“As the connected consumer achieves greater mobility, device storage becomes a limiting factor for consumer content, prompting a shift to cloud-enabled storage and access,” he said in a prepared statement. “Throughout 2015, we will see consumer electronics (CE) makers and online technology companies leverage cloud-based storage as a value-added feature.”

MSPs, meanwhile, could reap the rewards of a cloud-based storage services market that is expected to grow.

MarketsandMarkets has predicted the public and private cloud storage services market could be worth $56.57 billion by 2019, up from $13.57 billion last year.

The market research firm pointed out that there are several reasons this market could grow as well.

“With the rapid increase of digital content across the globe, there is a need to manage the constantly growing data files,” MarketsandMarkets said. “The growth in volume and variety of unstructured data in multi-industrial enterprises has created a need for secure, reliable and cost-efficient data storage infrastructure.”

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