Technology Business Research Inc.’s (TBR) Hybrid Cloud Customer Report projects the hybrid cloud market will offer $7 billion in cloud market opportunity in 2014. TBR surveyed 650 cloud endusers across North America, Europe and Asia to map vendor opportunity and customer and competitor landscapes for the report, which is one of three customer-facing research initiatives in TBR’s cloud customer portfolio. The data and analysis in the report detail customers’ top perceived benefits from vendors, predicts buyer behavior, and highlights the barriers and drivers of adoption, which will shape the competitive strategies of hybrid cloud vendors over the next two years.

“The next inflection point for cloud is upon us, as customers start to integrate their growing portfolio of cloud services. We see this push to hybridization as an opportunity and an enabler of additional public and private cloud service adoption. The ability to interconnect and manage cloud services is quickly becoming a mandate that will make hybrid the foundation on which customers base future cloud investments,” said Allan Krans, senior analyst.

Demand is growing for standardization of processes across workloads, and hybrid cloud offers customers the flexible solutions they need in their cloud services. Embedded between private and public cloud services, hybrid cloud services will be the primary cloud environment evaluated and purchased over the next two years. TBR defines hybrid cloud as cloud-to-cloud integrations across a single workload and between workloads that can be split into three sections: private-private, private-public and public-public. TBR anticipates 31% growth in hybrid cloud services in the next 12 months — higher than the projected growth of either public or private cloud services. Private-public integration, which will constitute $3.4 billion, or 49%, of the projected $7 billion opportunity, is expected to grow the most in 2014. Public-public and private-private will grow $1.7 billion (24% of the opportunity) and $1.9 billion (27% of the opportunity), respectively.

TBR’s Hybrid Cloud Customer Report offers vendors and customers a unique, business-centric and critical view into the opportunities in the hybrid cloud services market, providing analysis of the future of the growing hybrid cloud landscape.

 Additional reports on cloud include Private Cloud Customer Report and Professional Cloud Services Customer Report.