Spending on public cloud IT infrastructure will grow by 18.8 percent in 2016, according to the latest figures from IDC, which predicts it will reach $23.2 billion (£18bn).
This is almost double the amount that will be spent on private cloud infrastructure, which will grow 10.3 percent year over year to hit $13.8 billion (£11bn).
“Overall, we will continue to see steady growth in demand for public cloud services and, as a result, underlying spending on IT infrastructure by CSPs,” said Natalya Yezhkova, storage systems research director at IDC.
Push demand
“The economic and financial volatility we see in some regions will push demand further as increasing sophistication of public cloud offerings allows organisations to fulfill their needs across a growing variety of IT domains while OPEX-oriented pricing models provide some relief to tightening IT budgets.”
The boost comes as spending on IT equipment for non-cloud deployments falls almost four percent, said IDC. However, these traditional deployments still account for the largest share of IT infrastructure end user spending, at 63.4 percent.
The numbers are from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure tracker, which pointed to an overall increase of cloud infrastructure spending of 15.5 percent this year, reaching $37.1 billion (£29bn). The tracker measures sales of equipment such as servers, storage, and Ethernet switches.
Not one geographical region will experience a decline in cloud spending, said IDC, with investments in public cloud growing at a faster rate than investments in private cloud infrastructure.
For cloud environments combined, spending on Ethernet switches will be growing at the highest rate, 39.5 percent, while spending on server and storage will grow at 11.4 percent and 14.2 percent, respectively.
In the longer-term, IDC is expecting spending on IT infrastructure for cloud to grow at a 13.1 percent annual rate to $59.5 billion (£46bn) in 2020, representing almost half (48.7 percent) of total spending on IT infrastructure.
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