AI drives spending on cloud infrastructure, IDC reports

The high demand among hyperscalers and major service providers also skewed the data towards the public cloud side of the equation, IDC’s data showed. “Shared” cloud infrastructure, which largely covers public cloud-type deployments, saw 27% growth compared to a year earlier, reaching $22.8 billion. That also represents nearly 45% of total worldwide infrastructure spending, cloud or non-cloud. By contrast, “dedicated” cloud, which is mostly private cloud infrastructure, grew by a mere 1.4% over the same time frame, to $9 billion.

“Most of the spending continues to be concentrated on the public cloud area,” Fernandez said.

Don’t count out private cloud growth

Nevertheless, Fernandez noted, private cloud will remain important for the foreseeable future, not least because the rank and file of cloud users – not the hyperscalers and service providers – has a significant and potentially growing need for it.

“Everything that remains [on-premises or in private cloud] is there for a reason,” she said. “In many cases, the reasons are privacy, compliance and security.”

Plenty of workloads that are mission-critical – particularly those subject to industry specific regulation or new general regulations in jurisdictions like the EU – have not only been kept in private or on-prem deployments, but many that have been moved to the public cloud are being “repatriated,” Fernandez said.

“If you see the numbers overall, they remain relatively stable in terms of spending,” she said. “That infrastructure needs to continue being sustained and deployed and refreshed at a certain pace.”