The report, entitled “Predictions 2021: Cloud Computing” said that the global pandemic reinforced the tremendous value and necessity of cloud computing to the global economy and workforce.

“Without cloud apps, tools, and services, we could not have sent millions of workers home, maintained global supply chains, or shifted entire industry business models in a matter of weeks”, the report said.

The rush to cloud also exposed stark contrasts between companies that embrace cloud technologies and those that have resisted or underfunded them.

“The aggressive move to cloud, already proceeding at a healthy clipbefore the pandemic, will spike in 2021, yielding even greater enterprise adoption, cloud provider revenue, and business value in 2021”, Forrester said.

It predicted that public cloud revenue will return to hypergrowth as cloud powers pandemic recovery.

Forrester previously predicted that the public cloud infrastructure market would grow 28 per ent to reach $113.1 billion in 2021. Mid-pandemic, the four largest public clouds maintained very strong revenue growth. (AWS: 29 percent, Microsoft Azure: 47 percent, Google Cloud: 43 percent, and Alibaba: 59 percent.)

“We now predict the global public cloud infrastructure market will grow 35 percent to $120 billion in 2021 and that Alibaba Cloud will take the number three revenue spot globally, after AWS and Azure.”

On-premises DR sites will fade in 2021, with recovery bound for the cloud, the report said.