The country's nascent cloud computing market, a platform where software applications and related resources can be shared online, is expected to touch USD 1 billion in the next five years, says a survey.

"India's cloud computing market will be around USD 1 billion over the next five years," consulting firm Zinnov Management Consulting said in a report.

Cloud computing, which is Internet-based, facilitates sharing of technological resources, software and digital information. The emerging field would function on a pay-per-use model, helping technology companies to bring down cost.

The cloud computing platform is expected to mainly benefit enterprise SMB (small and medium business), SOHO (small office, home office) and consumer segments.

A recent study, sponsored by IT infrastructure firm EMC, said that rising growth in the digital information space would create a significant market opportunity for both the cloud computing and storage.

Digital information includes data, text and media elements.

Going by EMC estimates, the storage market in India will be over USD 1 billion in the next five years.

Digital information in India will grow from 40,000 petabytes to 2.3 million petabytes (one petabyte equals 1,000 terabytes) over the next decade (2010 to 2020), twice as fast as the worldwide rate