The trend towards the cloud continues unabated: the market for servers, storage, switches and other infrastructure is set to grow in 2015 to a volume of $32.6 bn, or by a full 24.1%. However, other IT expenditure has fallen by 1.6%. Nevertheless, at $66.8 bn, this remains the largest market segment.
The analysts at the IDC market research institute, which provides this forecast, see the growth as a relatively homogeneous development globally. The only exception they state is Central and Eastern Europe, where political and economic uncertainties are having a negative effect on IT investments. Investments in private clouds should grow by 15.8% to $12.1 bn, while expenditure on public cloud infrastructure should increase by 29.6% to $20.5 bn.
Nothing is expected to change for this development in the next five years. Investments in the cloud infrastructure should increase by 15.1% year by year and reach $53.1 bn in 2019, which will then correspond to 46% of the total professional IT market. In contrast, expenditure on other infrastructure (without the cloud) is expected to fall further at a rate of 1.7%. The fondness for public clouds is also set to remain: IDC expects that service providers will each spend around 16.3% more to offer their customers public cloud services in the coming years. In this way, by 2019 an investment volume of $33.6 bn would be created. In contrast, expenditure on private clouds is set to hit a growth rate of ‘only’ 13.2% and grow to $19.4 bn by 2019. (Source: IDC/rf)