New data published by market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC) has found spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments increased by 18.5% year over year in Q4 2023 to reach £25.1 billion ($31.8 billion).
The latest edition of the Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment from IDC is good news for the cloud infrastructure market, with the sector forecast to see spending grow by almost 20% in 2024, compared to 2023, to total £102.5 billion ($129.9 billion).
As cloud infrastructure reaches new heights, non-cloud infrastructure is set to suffer, with a slight decline of 1.4% in 2024 to £45.4 billion ($57.6 billion).
One of the main reasons for the continuing strong growth in the cloud is the significant rise in artificial intelligence (AI) related investments, said Research Director of Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers at IDC, Juan Pablo Seminara.
“Even though some caution remains on the socio-political side, the improvement in economic prospects contribute to a very positive spending outlook for 2024 and 2025 where cloud-based spending is expected to rebound at double-digit growth rates,” said Seminara.
Despite these growth figures for cloud infrastructure, the market has not seen positive results globally. The sector saw a large decline of more than 31% in China in Q4 2023, reflecting economic challenges in the country. Canada, the Middle East and Africa also saw year-on-year falls.
Thanks to extremely high growth rates of over 40% in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) and the US, as well as double-digit growth rates in Central and Eastern Europe and Japan, the cloud infrastructure market has continued its upward trajectory.
A more moderate compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.8% has been forecast by IDC over the 2023-2028 period, reaching almost £157.7 billion ($200 billion) by 2028. If the IDC data is accurate, cloud infrastructure will account for the vast majority (73.6%) of total compute and storage infrastructure spend by 2028.
