Cloud IT infrastructure spend will scrape $70B this year

Computing power that was once inordinately expensive, reserved for niche applications, is now accessible with the company credit card.
6 May 2020

God-like computing power now in arm’s reach. Source: Shutterstock

  • Cloud IT infrastructure will see a further boost, as businesses migrate workloads to save costs, and facilitate remote working
  • Adding to the ongoing cloud surge, this spend could see cloud IT infrastructure on track to hit US$100 billion by 2024

Cloud computing has served as a lifeline in the business disruption caused by the pandemic. While interest, and investment, in cloud has been surging for years now, we can expect a further turbo injection as a direct result of the current climate. 

Billions of private and business users now take advantage of this on-demand technology – 78 percent of companies were already using public or private cloud in 2019, according to IDC data. 

It’s changed the way people communicate, manage data and do business, and has made advanced capabilities like data analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence accessible to really any company that wants them. 

Cloud computing is increasing productivity, improving CX, lowering costs and helping drive more revenue for enterprises – nine in 10 organizations plan to move workloads off-premise entirely by 2022. 

Cloud IT infrastructure spending surge

The current spike in cloud computing usage then, is just the floodgate being cranked open a bit further. Will millions of workers more than temporarily ‘out of office’, and signs that this way of working may stick, there’s a growing need for cloud solutions, and companies are ready to spend more on the hardware and software needed to support these requirements. 

According to data gathered by LearnBonds, this year cloud IT infrastructure spend is expected to hit US$69.2 billion.

That’s more or less triple the figure for 2013 (US$22.3 billion, according to Statista and IDC), and within less than a decade, represents a complete shift in how billions of people manage and store their private data, access services or communicate with one another. 

It shows how computing power that was once inordinately expensive for enterprises is now immediately accessible with the company credit card, bringing transformative power to businesses across every industry, whether it’s automating customer service with AI or using heavyweight analytics tools to provide personalized insurance quotes

This year, the IDC expects public cloud infrastructure to dominate spend and drive cloud’s global market growth, “as enterprise IT budgets tighten through the year” to help weather uncertain market forecasts.

Not only will businesses invest more to support employees now relying on collaboration tools, but it will be connected to workload migrations to the public cloud as enterprises seek ways to save money for the current year. 

“Once the coast is clear” IDC expects some of this increased demand to “remain sticky going forward” and that could propel the cloud IT infrastructure market towards a US$100 billion milestone by 2024.