A new study by Frost & Sullivan found that enterprises continue to adopt web hosting despite operational challenges they face. These issues, however, are creating a unique opportunity for service providers to offer solutions, like application monitoring and cloud evaluation tools, to fix problems.

According to the research firm, the market for cloud infrastructure testing services is expected to generate more than $320 million in revenue by 2017, up from only $68 million in 2010. Revenue from cloud application monitoring sales, on the other hand, is predicted to grow from $168 million in 2010 to more than $556 million in 2017.

"Besides testing the cloud infrastructure for security, scalability and performance, enterprises also seek insights into the performance of applications hosted in the cloud environment," Frost & Sullivan senior research analyst Srihari Padmanabhan said. "Service providers, enterprise organizations and network engineers need to understand the root cause of faults in the network by gaining end-to-end visibility across the cloud, giving numerous opportunities for application monitoring as well."

According to TATA Consulting Services, roughly one-third of U.S. businesses plan to invest more heavily in cloud-based applications by 2014, driven by the need to enhance security, performance and efficiency.