Cloud infrastructure spending set to skyrocket - IDC

Public cloud spending to drive global growth of cloud IT infrastructure in 2015

Global spending on cloud IT infrastructure is set for an upswing and will account for a third of total spending on enterprise IT infrastructure in 2015, according to IDC.

The latest survey from the market watcher found that worldwide spending on cloud IT infrastructure - server, storage, and Ethernet switches - will hit $32.6bn (£21.45bn) in 2015, an increase of 24.1 per cent.

This growth will be largely driven by the public cloud, which will grow at 29.6 per cent this year, according to IDC, compared with the private cloud which will increase at 15.8 per cent in 2015.

While this market is set for growth, spending on IT infrastructure in non-cloud environments will fall by 1.6 per cent in 2015, but will still be the biggest market segment at $66.8bn, IDC said.

Natalya Yezhkova, research director of storage systems at IDC, said: "Numerous IDC surveys indicate growing interest among enterprise customers to cloud deployments across multiple IT domains.

"End-users often cite the agility of IT infrastructure and economic reasons as drivers for cloud adoption, but we also expect that the proliferation of next generation applications born and run in the cloud will fuel its further growth."

For the next five years, cloud IT infrastructure will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.1 per cent and hit $53.1bn by 2019, IDC said. While it forecasted that spending on non-cloud IT infrastructure will continue its downward trajectory and drop by 1.7 per cent CAGR over that period.

IDC said in 2019, service providers will spend $33.6bn on providing IT infrastructure for public cloud services, and $19.4bn on private cloud IT infrastructure.