The public cloud services market is slowly maturing, giving rise to a varied ecosystem of composite and value-added services. Security is starting to figure more prominently among these services as organizations realize they need better control over cloud-based processes, according to ABI Research (http://www.abiresearch.com).

While compliance concerns still remain high, cloud service providers have worked hard to address the issue, but at premium-level costs. SMBs have struggled to find the right balance between public cloud offerings and security. This gap is quickly being filled by innovative startups, eager to fill the demand for cost-effective and specialized security services for organizations subscribed to public cloud services, according to ABI Research.

The most dynamic market responses are around cloud API management, identity and access management (IAM), host and network security, and encryption and key management. Of the four markets, IAM is driving the trend, with federated SSO highly popular for managing complex and various cloud service subscriptions. ABI Research expects the IAM market for public CSPs to hit over $2 billion in revenue by 2019.

"Despite the flurry of activity in plugging the public cloud security gap, the current offerings are still largely playing in a nascent market. There is great scope for continued innovation and growth in this sector, particularly around IaaS and PaaS offerings such as those from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google," says Michela Menting, senior cybersecurity analyst, ABI Research.