Global information technology research and advisory company Gartner has predicted an 18.3% growth of the public cloud services market in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 2016. The company predicts total growth to amount to US$879.3 million, surpassing the US$743.1 million in achieved in 2015.

Sid Nag, Research Director at Gartner says the growing trend in the region is part of a continuing shift from legacy IT services to cloud-based services.

"Organisations are pursuing a cloud first strategy driving market growth. The growing interest in the reduction of data center build-outs, being replaced by the public cloud, will drive faster growth of the cloud market now and in the future. The growth in cloud management and security is a testimony that cloud related services, in addition to the core cloud services, are critical to cloud adoption. Organisations will look for increased automation and management of these cloud assets, as well as focus on the security aspects of consuming public cloud."

Gartner also predicts that business process as a service (BPaaS), which the organisation has found to be the largest segment of the cloud services market in MENA, is expected to reach $261.3 million in 2016 - equal to a 6% increase on last year's figure.

The cloud management and security services market has been found to be the fastest growth segment with 2016 revenue on pace to grow 27.5% from 2015. Software as a service (SaaS) on the other hand is expected to grow 26.6% in 2016 to reach a revenue total of US$210 million.

The International Data Corporation's (IDC) WW Quarterly Cloud Infrastructure Tracker, IT infrastructure spending issued on the same day as Gartner's findings, also detailed a rise in the region - although Europe was factored in that forecast.

EMEA cloud IT infrastructure revenue grew 17.6% to US$1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2016, according to IDC, while public cloud alone registered a 13.5 % growth to US$500 million.

The emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) took 15% of EMEA cloud investments in 1Q16 according to IDC. The Quarterly Cloud Infrastructure Tracker also noted that the share is flat compared with the previous quarter, though the split between the CEE and MEA regions shifted in favor of MEA.

Continuously challenging macroeconomic conditions in Russia and weaker investments in the public cloud segment are cited as the main reasons for the shift. Cloud infrastructure spending in the CEMA region is estimated to be 17% of the total addressable server, storage, and networking hardware market, with public cloud accounting for about 47% of this share.