Mumbai, Feb 23 (IANS): Global public Cloud services market is projected to grow 18 per cent in 2017 to hit $246.8 billion, up from $209.2 billion in 2016, market research firm Gartner said on Thursday.

The highest growth will come from Cloud system infrastructure services which is projected to grow 36.8 per cent in 2017 to reach $34.6 billion. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is expected to grow 20.1 per cent to reach $46.3 billion.

"While all external sourcing decisions will not result in a virtually automatic move to the cloud, buyers are looking to the 'Cloud first' in their decisions, in support of time-to-value impact via speed of implementation," said Sid Nag, Research Director at Gartner.

Through 2020, Cloud adoption strategies will influence more than 50 per cent of IT outsourcing deals. SaaS will remain the second largest segment in the global Cloud services market.

"By 2019, more than 30 per cent of the 100 largest vendors' new software investments will have shifted from Cloud-first to Cloud-only," added Nag.

While China's Cloud service market is nascent and several years behind the US and European markets, it is expected to maintain high levels of growth as digital transformation becomes more mainstream over the next five years, Gartner said.