The public cloud computing services market is expected to grow 19.6 percent to reach $109 billion globally this year on the back of infrastructure as services area, which is the fastest-growing area at 45.4 percent, research firm Gartner says.

The report says that the public cloud services market is forecast to grow 19.6 percent in 2012 to total $109 billion worldwide. Infrastructure as a service (Iaas) is the fastest growing segment of public cloud services market and is expected to grow 45.4 percent in 2012. However, business process services (BPaaS) will remain the largest segment, accounting for about 77 per cent of the total market.

Cloud computing will enable companies to use software, applications and various services on pay-per-use basis without the need to set up the IT infrastructure. In 2011, cloud advertising represented about 47 per cent of the total public cloud services market. Through 2016, cloud advertising will continue to account for about 47 percent of total public cloud services spending.

Software as a service (SaaS) is the next-largest segment and is forecast to grow to $ 14.4 billion in 2012, while IaaS is forecast to grow from $4.3 billion in 2011 to $ 6.2 billion in 2012.

Although North America is the largest region and is expected to produce the largest absolute increase in market size, Gartner expects the highest regional growth rates in emerging Asia-Pacific, including India and Indonesia, China, Eurasia, including Russia and Latin America which includes Argentina, Mexico and Brazil.