Worldwide cloud services revenue is forecast to reach $68.3bn in 2010, a 16.6% increase from 2009 revenue of $58.6bn, according to advisory firm Gartner.

The industry is poised for strong growth through 2014, when worldwide cloud services revenue is projected to reach $148.8bn.

Gartner estimates that, over the course of the next five years, enterprises will spend $112bn cumulatively on software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), combined.

Gartner is seeing an acceleration of adoption of cloud computing and cloud services among enterprises and an explosion of supply-side activity as technology providers maneuver to exploit the growing commercial opportunity.

North American and European markets represent the largest markets from a geographic perspective, and while other geographies around the world will experience growth, this growth will not notably alter the overall weighting away from the larger, more-mature regions over the course of the next five years.

The U.S. share of the worldwide cloud services market was 60% in 2009 and will be 58% in 2010, but by 2014, this will be diluted to 50% as other countries and regions begin to adopt cloud services in more-significant volumes.

Western Europe is expected to account for 23.8% of the cloud services market in 2010, and Japan will represent 10%. In 2014, the U.K. is forecast to account for 29% of the market, while Japan will represent 12% of cloud services revenue.

The financial services and manufacturing industries are the largest early adopters of cloud services. Communications and high-tech industries are also leveraging the cloud in significant volume, while the public sector is also clearly interested in the potential of cloud services and its share of the overall market.