Markets outside North America outsource about 80% of their total data center capacity, according to a new report by Gartner.

The world as a whole is moving toward industrialized IT services, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, Gartner said. North America is ahead of all other markets in advancing this trend, with a 60% cloud adoption rate.

Gartner VP and distinguished analyst Claudio Da Rold said the data center market had been showing symptoms of a traditional market at the crossroads over the past two years, where it had reached maturity and faced either reinvention or decline.

“Buyers in enterprise organizations must recognize the common usage patterns and differentiated levels of adoption of hosting vs. data center outsourcing, as well as the different business and market drivers toward new products,” Da Rold added.

The report examines the general data center outsourcing market, looking at the various ways to outsource IT infrastructure.

North America’s data center outsourcing market was US$33bn in 2011. Web hosting and colocation markets were $23bn combines.

While the US hosting market continues to accelerate innovation and transformation, the region’s traditional outsourcing services are growing at a slower pace. Gartner attributes this trend to infrastructure utility solutions and lower-price IT outsourcing models.

Gartner sized European data center outsourcing market at $38bn in 2011. Web hosting and colocation totaled $8.6bn, and public-cloud adoption was 22.9%.

Asia Pacific’s data center services market was $10bn in 2011, with web hosting and colocation totaling $2.5bn. Public-cloud penetration was 9.8% in Japan and 3% elsewhere in the region.