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Spending on certain products in the global cloud infrastructure market increased by 12.5 per cent, year-on-year, during the first quarter of 2021, with the market shifting towards shared cloud infrastructure all but guaranteed.
According to research firm IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment report, spending on shared cloud infrastructure rose by 11.6 per cent year-on-year during Q1, to US$10.3 billion. Meanwhile, non-cloud infrastructure spending rose by just 6.3 per cent to US$ 13.5 billion.
As a result, IDC expects shared cloud infrastructure spending to surpass non-cloud infrastructure spending “in the near future”.
Meanwhile, spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure rose by 14.7 per cent during the quarter, to US$4.8 billion, with 45.5 per cent of this deployed on customer premises.
Service providers are also stepping up their spending on compute and storage infrastructure, spending US$15.billion on products in the market during the quarter, an increase of 12.5 per cent year-on-year. This, according to IDC, accounted for 54 per cent of the total compute and infrastructure spend.
The firm's report, which looks at spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud infrastructure, claimed parts of the global economy are just only now starting to shake off the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and return to growth.
“A lasting impact on IT infrastructure will be an increased reliance on cloud platforms for delivering commercial, educational, and social applications, as well as an intensified focus among organisations on business continuity and risk management, helping to drive digital transformation initiatives and increase usage of as-a-service delivery models,” IDC noted.
On a global scale, cloud infrastructure spending increased across the majority of regions during the quarter, with Canada coming out ahead with 40.3 per cent growth. In second place was China with 35 per cent and then Asia Pacific excluding Japan and China with 28.8 per cent.
Following the top three were Western Europe with 10.8 per cent, the US with 4.5 per cent and Japan with a decline of 1.1 per cent.
As for the major players in the market, all the top eight vendors experienced revenue growth during the quarter. Dell Technologies came out on top for revenue, with US$2.5 billion, while Lenovo saw the highest revenue growth percentage, at 38.2 per cent, to US$994 million.
Credit: IDC On a yearly basis, IDC expects cloud infrastructure spending to increase by 12.9 per cent, to US$74.6 billion by the end of 2021.
While the shared cloud market is anticipated to surpass non-cloud in the future, it’s not expected to occur during this calendar year, with both markets to grow by 12.2 per cent to US$51.8 billion and 2.7 per cent to US$58.5 billion, respectively.
Dedicated cloud infrastructure meanwhile is earmarked for growth of 14.7 per cent, rising to US$22.7 billion for the year, and the spend on products within the overall market by service providers is set to grow at 11.1 per cent year-on-year, to US$74.7 billion.
Looking even further ahead, spending on compute and storage cloud infrastructure is forecast to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.3 per cent from 2021 to 2025, hitting US$112.9 billion in 2025, making up 66.1 per cent of all compute and storage infrastructure spend.
Shared cloud infrastructure is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 10.5 per cent, non-cloud with 0.3 per cent and dedicated cloud at 13.1 per cent.
Additionally, service providers are expected to increase their spend on compute and storage infrastructure by a CAGR over the period of 10.1 per cent, hitting US$108.8 billion in 2025.
