The global cloud services and infrastructure market earned $110 billion in 2015, with the public cloud sector growing faster than private or hybrid cloud sectors, according to the latest report from Synergy Research.

The market as a whole grew 28 percent in the four quarters ending with September.

“In many ways 2015 was the year when cloud became mainstream. Across a wide range of cloud applications and services we have seen that usage has now passed well beyond the early adopter phase and barriers to adoption continue to diminish,” said Synergy Research Group’s founder and chief analyst Jeremy Duke.

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The report combines information on both vendors and operators of cloud infrastructure, so total numbers include the sales of cloud-enabling kit by HPE and Cisco alongside service revenues posted by the likes of AWS, Azure and SoftLayer.

According to the report, Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service segments of the market saw the highest growth, with revenues increasing 51 percent year-on-year. Synergy identified Amazon and Microsoft as the leaders in this field.

Private and hybrid infrastructure services grew at a slower rate of 45 percent, led by Amazon and IBM.

Software-as-a-Service and cloud-based Unified Communications markets grew 29 and 16 percent respectively.

The sales of software and hardware used to build cloud environments were obviously on the up, exceeding $60 billion. Researchers noted that total spend on infrastructure still outpaced spend on services delivered using this infrastructure, but the gap was narrowing rapidly.

“Cloud technologies are now generating massive revenues and high growth rates that will continue long into the future, making this an exciting time for IT vendors and service providers that focus on cloud,” said Synergy’s chief analyst John Dinsdale.