Enterprises are expected to spend more on cloud services this year, with total cloud IT infrastructure spending worldwide slated to grow by 26.4 per cent, according to latest industry figures from IDC.
By the end of this year, total spending on servers, storage, and Ethernet switches, which come under IDC’ definition of cloud IT infrastructure, will hit US$33.4 billion, making up a third of all IT infrastructure spending – up from 28.1 per cent in 2014.
More money is also being pumped into public cloud IT infrastructure, for which spending will grow by 32.2 per cent to reach US$21.7 billion this year.
Spending on private cloud infrastructure, on the other hand, will grow slower at just 16.8 per cent over 2014, while spending on non-cloud IT infrastructure will remain flat at US$67 billion.
IDC expects spending on cloud IT infrastructure to grow across all regions and all technologies.
In most regions, it said, growth in public cloud IT infrastructure spending will exceed growth in spending on private cloud IT infrastructure. It also expects public cloud service providers to continue expanding their data centres and services.
In 2019, IDC expects cloud service providers will spend US$35.3 billion on IT infrastructure for delivering public cloud services, while spending on private cloud IT infrastructure will reach US$19.2 billion.
Natalya Yezhkova, IDC’s research director for storage systems, said businesses are continuing to evaluate various approaches to adopting cloud-based IT.
While some integrate public cloud service into their IT strategies, others choose to build their own private clouds or use third-party private cloud offerings, and some, seeing benefits in both, will implement hybrid cloud strategies, she added.
“The breadth and width of cloud offerings only continue to grow, with an increasing universe of business- and consumer-oriented solutions being born in the cloud and/or served better by the cloud,” Yezhkova said.
“This growing demand from the end user side and expansion of cloud-based offerings from service providers will continue to fuel growth in spending on the underlying IT infrastructure in the foreseeable future,” she said.
