Enterprises are increasingly moving services, applications and infrastructure to cloud-based architecture, IHS reports-- and as a result cloud revenues from the segment are to surge by a factor of three from 2011 to 2017.
According to the analyst 2014 enterprise cloud spending should total $174.2 billion (a 20% increase over $145.2bn in 2013) before growing to $235.1bn by 2017, triple the $79.2bn from 2011.
“With the cloud touching nearly every consumer and enterprise around the globe, spending for cloud-related storage, servers, applications and content will be dedicated toward building a framework that is rapidly scalable, highly dynamic, available on-demand and requiring minimal management,” IHS says. “The robust growth will come as an increasing number of large and small enterprises move more of their applications to the cloud, while also looking at data analytics to drive new insights into consumer behavior.”
The analyst estimates overall enterprise IT spending is worth approximately $2 trillion in 2014, with cloud-based services, applications, security and analytics accounting for an ever-growing slice.
Global cloud-based service consumer subscriptions are also on the up-- from 630 million in 2013 to 730m in 2014, a "potentially vast base of users to which cloud suppliers can market their products and other non-cloud services."
IHS points out wireless providers are missing out on the cloud opportunity, since they fail use data-analytic tools to come up with "truly differentiated" subscriber services. Thus potential revenues are lost to mobile value chain rivals.
"A new cloud paradigm will dictate new ways to manage data. Issues of security and compliance must be addressed, and cloud services need to be able to manage content in an organized fashion," the analyst concludes. "Moreover, issues of data loss, unauthorized access and mining for marketing purposes require deft handling."
Go Cloud-Related Spending by Businesses to Triple from 2011 to 2017
