Cloud Spending To Scale $332B This Year
Gartner forecasts a 23.1% increase in public cloud spending in 2021
According to Gartner’s latest forecast, worldwide cloud spending is expected to reach $332.3 billion in 2021, which is an increase of 23.1% from 2020 ($270 billion).
Fahmida Y Rashid writes for VentureBeat on major cloud spending trends in 2021 and 2022 based on Gartner’s predictions. Here are the key points:
Emerging technologies like containerization, virtualization, and edge computing are reasons for the increase in cloud spending.
SaaS remains the largest market segment in 2021 and is predicted to touch $122.6 billion this year and $145.3 billion in 2022.
Due to global efforts to produce and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, SaaS applications that enable automation and supply chain are critical.
Sid Nag, research VP at Gartner, feels that the pandemic further exacerbated the “loss of appetite” for data centers.
Cloud management and security services will reach $16 billion.
Cloud spending in 2021 and 2022 will be focussed on innovative applications combining cloud with AI, 5G, etc.
Companies will depend on the cloud to adopt emerging technologies, and the resulting workload and applications will encourage cloud spending.
International Data Corporation has said that worldwide edge computer spending will see 46.2% growth, followed by hardware at 32.2% and edge software at 21.6%.
Gartner also predicted that worldwide IT spending would reach $3.8 trillion in 2021, a growth of 4% from 2020.
What We Think
We aren’t surprised at all with the rapid growth of cloud and especially SaaS adoption. Its flexibility, speed, and cost-effectiveness, compared to on-premise software, makes it a clear winner. A lot of IT leaders we’ve spoken to also echo our thoughts. This will be expanded in a series of podcasts we’ll be releasing shortly.
You can find Fahmida’s article here and Gartner’s forecast here.