Global end-user spending on public cloud services is predicted to reach USD 597.3 billion by 2023, growing by 21.7% from USD 491 billion in the previous year, said a report by Gartner. Cloud computing has become essential to driving the next phase of digital business as organisations seek to utilise new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), Web3, and metaverse.
Web3 is the collective term given to open-source and interconnected decentralised applications that are powered by blockchain computing architecture while the term metaverse encompasses open-source virtual reality environments. According to Sid Nag, Vice-President Analyst, Gartner, ‘Hyperscale cloud providers are driving the cloud agenda. Organisations today view cloud as a highly strategic platform for digital transformation, which is requiring cloud providers to offer more sophisticated capabilities as the competition for digital services heats up.’
The largest contributors to worldwide end-user spending are the hyperscale cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud and Alibaba Cloud. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is predicted to experience the highest growth with an end-user spending of 30.9 percent followed by 24.1 percent from platform-as-a-service (PaaS). It is estimated that by 2026, 75 percent of organisations will shift to cloud as the fundamental platform for digital transformation.
Nag said, ‘The technology substrate of cloud computing is firmly dominated by the hyperscalers, but the leadership of the business application layer is more fragmented. Providers are facing demands to redesign SaaS offerings for increased productivity, leveraging cloud-native capabilities, embedded AI and composability – particularly as budgets are increasingly driven and owned by business technologists. This change will ignite a wave of innovation and replacement in the cloud platform and application markets’.
Gartner, an American information technology research and advisory firm, provides insights and advice to help its clients make the right decisions in today’s rapidly changing tech landscape. It assists businesses with the transformation of their machines, people and processes to support digital transformation and the changing needs of customers and businesses in the future. With a data-driven and forward-looking approach, the company enables its clients to stay ahead in the digital world.
