Merrill Lynch Report: Cloud compute market could be valued at $160bn by 2011

Merrill Lynch recently issued a research note: “The Cloud Wars: $100+ billion at stake” (07 May 2008). The analysts write that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity would amount to $160bn, including $95bn in business and productivity apps (email, office, CRM, etc.) and $65bn in online advertising.

This is the first significant financial analyst report that shows the awesome potential "internet infrastructure as a service" will have on the IT landscape.

Hosted email archiving in the cloud makes a lot of sense.

(Graph courtesy Markus Klems, Sonian added to show positioning)