Enterprises around the world spent $21.1 billion on cloud computing infrastructure services in the fourth quarter of 2021, signaling a rebound in cloud storage and computing power spending.
According to research firm IDC, cloud infrastructure spending rose 13.5% in the quarter year-on-year to $21.1 billion.
In the previous quarter, such spending had reached $18.6 billion, following a remarkable decline of 1.9% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2021. It was the first time in seven quarters that such spending had declined.
A massive digital transformation
Cloud spending has increased as businesses and governments around the world have embarked on major digital transformation projects over the past two years. The big winners are the big three cloud players: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft with Azure and its other cloud services, like Office 365.
“This is the second consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth as supply chain constraints have depleted supplier inventory in recent quarters. As order books continue to grow, pent-up demand bodes well for future growth, as long as the economy remains healthy and supply catches up to demand,” IDC estimates for Q4 2021.
For the whole of 2021, cloud spending increased by 8.8% compared to 2020, reaching a total of $73.9 billion for the year.
Non-cloud spending is also rising, for now
Business spending on traditional IT has also increased, but not as rapidly as for the cloud. The latter invested in non-cloud infrastructure to the tune of $17.2 billion, up 1.5% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to IDC. This marks the fourth straight quarter of growth in traditional IT spending, which grew 4.2% in 2020 to $59.6 billion for the year.
The cloud giants are trying to take advantage of each other in all sorts of ways. Last week, a Google Cloud investigation argued that reliance on Microsoft products was hurting governments’ cybersecurity. Obviously, Microsoft took issue.
IDC projects that enterprises will spend $90 billion on cloud infrastructure in 2022, up 21.7% from 2021. The big losers are traditional IT spending by organizations that maintain their own infrastructure. CIO spending on non-cloud infrastructure will decline 0.3% to $59.4 billion.
However, IDC estimates that spending on shared (shared) cloud infrastructure will increase 25.5% year over year to $64.5 billion for 2022, while spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure is expected to increase by 13.1% to reach $25.4 billion in 2022.
Source: ZDNet.com