Information technology (IT) research firm, Gartner, predicts that the Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA) cloud service market could grow its revenue by 24.5% to $462.3 million in 2013.

According to Gartner this is the result of that region’s public cloud services market, which grew by 13.4% in 2012 to $371.2 million, compared to $110 billion worldwide.

It was further reported that business process services, the largest segment in the cloud services market, accounted for 38% of the total Middle East and North African market last year.

Within the MENA region, some of the highest growth is expected to be in the software as a service (SaaS) segment, where cloud-based office suites and enterprise resource planning solutions grow rapidly, it was reported.

Earlier this year research firm Pyramid Research found that South Africa’s total cloud computing revenues could reach $245 million by 2017.

The study showed that the country’s large enterprise and public sector segments could be the main drivers of the expected revenues.