In 2024, cloud market revenue rose 25 percent from a year earlier. The number of companies grew 13.5 percent, and related staffing also continued to rise.

The Ministry of Science and ICT and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) on the 30th announced the results of the "2025 Cloud Industry Survey," which examined and analysed the state of South Korea's cloud industry in 2024.

The survey showed total domestic cloud-sector revenue in 2024 was 9.26 trillion won, up 25.2 percent from 2023's 7.4 trillion won. From 2020 to 2024, the compound annual growth rate of revenue was 23.2 percent, showing a steady increase.

By service type, revenue from infrastructure as a service (IaaS) rose 24.4 percent to 3.94 trillion won in 2024 from 3.17 trillion won in 2023. Platform as a service (PaaS) revenue increased 22 percent to 570 billion won from 470 billion won.

Software as a service (SaaS) revenue rose 24.2 percent to 3.22 trillion won from 2.59 trillion won. Cloud management services (CMS) revenue climbed 31.4 percent to 1.48 trillion won from 1.13 trillion won a year earlier, the most notable growth among the categories.

The number of cloud companies in 2024 totalled 2,712, up 323, or 13.5 percent, from 2023. Of these, SaaS companies numbered 1,894, up 15.3 percent, and IaaS companies totalled 457, up 4.8 percent, with SaaS accounting for 69.8 percent of cloud companies. In particular, CMS companies rose 47.9 percent from a year earlier to 139, the highest increase among all service types, with most of the increase, 77.8 percent or 35 companies, coming from firms with 30 or more employees.

Cloud industry staffing in 2024 was 33,217 people, up 2,563, or 8.4 percent, from 2023. The growth rate slowed somewhat from the previous year's 15.3 percent increase. By field, cloud developers accounted for the largest share at 11,146 people, or 33.6 percent. They were followed by cloud operations at 19.7 percent, planning, sales and support at 17.1 percent, cloud architects at 15.6 percent and cloud security at 14.1 percent.

Based on the survey results, MSIT plans to continue efforts to grow the cloud industry by building a national artificial intelligence (AI) computing centre and supporting the purchase and lease of graphics processing units (GPUs). It will also actively push key projects that can generate cloud demand, including the "independent AI foundation model project" and the "AX one-stop voucher."

Choi Dong-won (최동원), MSIT director general for AI Infrastructure Policy, said, "In step with expanding cloud demand, a key foundation that determines national AI competitiveness, we will continue to make active efforts to support sustained growth in the private cloud market and expand the adoption of private cloud services in the public sector."