News

Research Firm Predicts Big Uptick in Cloud Infrastructure Spending

• By Keith Ward
• 07/07/2015

Research firm IDC is out with new data that indicates spending on cloud infrastructure will soon take up a higher percentage of overall IT budgets. This year, IDC said, will see cloud infrastructure spending total one-third of these budgets.

The Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker from IDC forecasts growth of 26 percent this year -- to about $33 billion -- for cloud infrastructure products, which include "server, storage and Ethernet switch." Cloud infrastructure spending was 28 percent of overall IT infrastructure spending last year, which speaks to the increasing traction of the cloud.

It's just the beginning, too, according to IDC's projections. By 2019, the company expects cloud infrastructure products to account for nearly half -- 46.5 percent -- of all IT infrastructure spending. The increase will come at the expense of non-cloud IT infrastructure, which IDC predicts will fall at a rate of 1.4 percent annually.

The breakdown between public and private cloud spending is indicative of the direction in which IDC sees enterprises moving. Public cloud spending will grow 32.2 percent year-over-year in 2015 to $21.7 billion, while private cloud will see a 16.8 percent year-over-year increase, to $11.7 billion. Because most businesses are still putting their focus on private clouds, this represents a significant shift in priorities.

Natalya Yezhkova, a research director for Storage Systems at IDC, explained the results this way: "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. This growing demand from the end user side and expansion of cloud-based offerings from services providers will continue to fuel growth in spending on the underlying IT infrastructure in the foreseeable future."