Public cloud spending forecast to reach $1.35tn in 2027 - IDC

Software and information services, capital markets and telecommunications will see the fastest spending growth

Worldwide spending on public cloud services is forecast to reach $1.35tr in 2027, according to the latest update to the International Data Corporation's (IDC) worldwide software and public cloud services spending guide.

Annual spending growth, however, is expected to slow down slightly over the 2023-2027 forecast period, the market is forecast to achieve a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.9 per cent.

IDC already reported that growth in spending for compute and storage cloud infrastructure by 14.9 per cent reached $21.5bn earlier this year.

In April, research by Gartner found that cloud spend would reach $600bn in 2023 alone.

"Cloud now dominates tech spending across infrastructure, platforms, and applications," said Eileen Smith, program vice president for data and analytics at IDC.

"Most organisations have adopted the public cloud as a cost-effective platform for hosting enterprise applications and for developing and deploying customer-facing solutions.

"Looking forward, the cloud model remains incredibly well positioned to serve customer needs for innovation in application development and deployment, including as data, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), and edge needs continue to define the forefront of innovation."

This version of the spending guide utilises IDC's new industry taxonomy.

The taxonomy update delves deeper into sectors, sub-sectors (sector detail level), and industries, increasing the total number of industries covered from 20 to 28.

Of the 28 industries covered in the spending guide, the three largest in 2027 - banking, software and information services, and telecommunications - will together represent $326bn in public cloud services spending.

Retail and professional and personal services will be the next largest industries in terms of spending, giving the top five industries a combined share of nearly 36 per cent.

The industries that will see the fastest spending growth through 2027 are software and information services (24 per cent CAGR), capital markets (21.9 per cent CAGR), and telecommunications (21.8 per cent CAGR).

In fact, every industry except consumer will deliver double-digit CAGRs over the 2023-2027 forecast period.

Software as a service (SaaS) - applications will be the largest category of cloud computing, capturing roughly 40 per cent of all public cloud spending.

SaaS - applications will also see the slowest spending growth over the forecast period with a five-year CAGR of 15.8 per cent.

The leading SaaS applications will be enterprise resource management (ERM) and customer relationship management (CRM), followed by content workflow and management applications and collaborative applications.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will be the second largest category of public cloud spending, followed by platform as a service (PaaS).

PaaS spending will be the fastest growing category with a five-year CAGR of 27.2 per cent, led by purchases of data management software, application platforms, and analytics and business intelligence software.

IaaS spending, comprised of compute, storage, and networking devices, will be the second fastest growing category with a CAGR of 23.5 per cent.

SaaS - system infrastructure software (SIS) will be the smallest category of cloud spending, representing roughly 15 per cent of the overall market.

Security software will be the largest area of investment in this category, rivalling ERM spending in the SaaS applications category.

Physical and virtual computing software will see the fastest spending growth among the SIS products.

The United States will be the largest geographic public cloud market with spending forecast to reach $697bn in 2027.

Western Europe will be the second largest with investments totalling $273bn, followed by China at $117bn.

Latin America will see the fastest spending growth with a five-year CAGR of 29.1 per cent, followed by China with a CAGR of 26.9 per cent.