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Australian enterprises are set to invest almost $20 billion in cloud computing technology by 2025, according to new analysis by GlobalData.
The analyst firm claimed the market is set to grow by an average of 12.5 per cent over the next three years, reaching US$14.1 billion.
Broken down, public cloud services, including software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will account for more than half of the market over the forecast period, with SaaS being the largest category overall.
However, PaaS will be the fastest growing area over the forecast period, driven by enterprise preference for cloud-native application development platforms.
According to GlobalData technology analyst Saurabh Daga, this is due to the cost advantage and better application management capabilities of PaaS.
"Much like the rest of the world, Australian businesses witnessed COVID-19 pandemic-fueled rapid transformations, which included adoption of remote work, automation of key business processes, and dependence on digital channels for customer interactions," he said.
"Cloud-based platforms and services continue to be a key element of this ongoing transformation, thus driving the enterprise spending on cloud in the country to grow at 12.5 per cent over the forecast period.”
Public hyperscale providers like Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google have already established their cloud regions within Australia.
Google launched its second cloud region in Melbourne in 2021 and Microsoft is currently planning a new cloud region in Sydney, which will be its fourth in the country, GlobalData said.
AWS, meanwhile, is also set to launch another cloud region in Melbourne later this year.
Recently, Microsoft, in partnership with IT services provider Infosys, entered into a multi-year strategic agreement with Ausgrid to modernise its legacy applications and IT infrastructure through cloud management platform and managed services.
In August 2021, Atos was awarded a three-year contract by Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency Cloud Marketplace to provide cloud services to Australia’s federal government agencies.
Most recently, Australia’s criminal intelligence agency awarded a A$180 million contract to migrate its fingerprint system to a protected cloud platform.
Yet while large enterprises will account for the largest share of Australia's cloud market, the combined spending from micro, small and medium enterprises will increase at a marginally faster compound annual growth rate of 12.5 per cent over the forecast period.
“Various Australian government digitisation initiatives such as [the] Digital Business Plan, and [the] Digital Business-to-Business (B2B) Partnerships Initiative, will be the key growth driver for spending on cloud services and platforms by the SMEs in Australia," Daga added.
