Spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud infrastructure, including dedicated and shared environments, increased 6.6% year over year in the third quarter of 2021 (3Q21) to $18.6 billion, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment.
For the full year 2021, IDC forecasts cloud infrastructure spending to grow 8.3% compared to 2020 to $71.8 billion, while non-cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 1.9% to $58.4 billion after two years of declines. Shared cloud infrastructure is expected to grow by 7.2% year over year to $49.7 billion for the full year. Spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 10.7% to $22.2 billion for the full year.
Some additional highlights from IDC:
- In 3Q21, service providers as a group spent $18.9 billion on compute and storage infrastructure, up 10.2% from 3Q20 and up 6.7% from 2Q21. This spending accounted for 57.1% of the total compute and storage infrastructure market. IDC expects compute and storage spending by service providers to reach $72.6 billion for 2021, growing 7.4% compared to 2020.
- The Asia/Pacific subregions, Canada, and the Europe subregions saw double-digit growth in spending, while Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and the United States saw more moderate single-digit increases in spending.
- The Asia/Pacific region (excluding Japan and China) showed the strongest year-over-year increase in cloud infrastructure spending in 3Q21 at 64.3% while the U.S. recorded the weakest growth at 1.1%.
- For the full year, spending on cloud infrastructure is expected to increase across all regions compared to 2020, particularly in Asia/Pacific regions (excluding Japan), Canada, and Central & Eastern Europe. The United States is expected to show only marginal year-over-year growth of 0.4%.
IDC expects to see continuously strong demand for shared cloud infrastructure with spending surpassing non-cloud infrastructure spending in 2022.
- Long term, IDC expects spending on compute and storage cloud infrastructure to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.4% over the 2020-2025 forecast period, reaching $118.8 billion in 2025 and accounting for 67.0% of total compute and storage infrastructure spend.
- Shared cloud infrastructure will account for 70.9% of this amount, growing at a 12.7% CAGR. Spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure will grow at a CAGR of 11.5%.
- Spending on non-cloud infrastructure will rebound in 2021 but will flatten out at a CAGR of 0.5%, reaching $58.6 billion in 2025. Spending by service providers on compute and storage infrastructure is expected to grow at a 1.3% CAGR, reaching $115.4 billion in 2025.
