• by Jess Nelson , February 5, 2016

The cloud market -- spurred on by an overall 28% compounded annual growth rate of 28% -- remains nascent, with lots of growth on the horizon, per a recent Synergy Research Group study. The industry may owe projected growth to Millennials.

Millennial-led companies are more likely to adopt a cloud-first IT strategy, according to a recent International Data Corporation (IDC) report.

IDC, a research company, asserts that 70% of small businesses and 90% of mid-market businesses now engage with the cloud in one aspect or another. The average number of cloud apps in use for a small businesses and mid-market company are four and eight, respectively.

The IDC report, U.S. 2016 SMB Enterprise Application Migration Survey: Watching Midmarket Move to a Cloud-First IT Environment, spells out clear spending differences by age in IT adoption. Millennials ages 35 or younger are far more likely than older generations to adopt a cloud-first IT environment.

Millennials outrank Baby Boomers and Generation X in leveraging the cloud beyond simple storage or e-commerce related services, and Millennial-led companies and Millennial IT leaders are adopting cloud applications at a higher rate of more than 20%.

Cloud applications that Millennial-led companies have adopted include travel, invoice, expense management and human capital management, according to the report. 

Get ready for a boon, according to Gartner. A January Gartner study asserts only 13% of publicly listed companies currently use a cloud-first email service such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google Apps for Work, and the vast majority of companies use a hybrid or on-premises hosted email service.