As Barb Darrow reported last week in an article about Gartner:  “In a new report, the big researcher estimates that the public cloud market overall will grow 18.5 percent, to $131 billion, in 2017 from $111 billion in 2012. Under this broad umbrella term for public cloud services, Gartner includes the usual suspects — Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) a la Amazon and the growing crowd of OpenStack-based public cloud providers.”

Of course, Gartner tossed in everything and anything, including advertising-as-a-service.  However, the core areas of growth include IaaS and file and storage, which represents the fastest growing part of public cloud services, growing 42.4 percent in 2012 alone to $6.1 billion.  With growth accelerating to 47.3 percent, it’s expected to hit $9 billion in 2013.

This is just one of dozens of indications that cloud computing is meeting and exceeding all expectations in market growth.  So, no big news there.  However, we’re getting current data which is providing a basis of validation.

The trouble I have with these reports is that they allow the technology providers to define what they are selling as “cloud technology.”   In many cases, such as those who provide IaaS and PaaS services, it clearly is cloud technology.  However, most technology providers are cloud washing their existing traditional technology as “cloud technology,” when it clearly is not.

Too bad there are no judges to make the call as to what’s a cloud, and what’s not.  I’m happy to volunteer.