The progression and development of cloud infrastructures keeps going on. According to a report recently published by International Data Corporation (IDC), cloud spending by enterprises is set to increase dramatically over the next five years. This includes both shared and dedicated cloud environments.
In this Befree blog post we address all the data and numbers provided by IDC regarding Cloud spending, one of the most recommended investments today.
Cloud servers and shared and dedicated environments: What are the differences?
Before starting to analyze and talk about the data, it’s convenient to explain the terms we will talk about. Cloud infrastructures can include two types of environments: shared and dedicated. Depending on which of them a company has, its spending on Cloud will be one or the other.
A Cloud server bases its services on a cluster – a set of servers operating as one – in the cloud. Each of them is dedicated to storing a copy of the website in an updated form, thus reducing the traffic from one server to another when they are busy. Thus, a Cloud server is created by using virtualization software to split a physical server into different virtual servers.
Shared environments, on the other hand, consist of servers that, as their name suggests, are not exclusive. They are used by several entities, companies or organizations. This is a simpler and easier option to use, as well as much cheaper than the others. This, however, means that their services and capabilities are limited, so they are highly recommended for SMEs or individuals.
Finally, dedicated environments are exclusive to the person who uses them. They are not shared with anyone else. A good simile to explain them is to think of a hard disk. We only use it ourselves and it’s not accessible to any other person or organization. Thus, it’s advisable to have a dedicated environment for those entities that plan to expand in the short-medium term.
Cloud Spending: Data from IDC Report
The analyst firm offers a wealth of information and data in its recent report. A trend can be extracted from them, which we show below in this infographics:
As can be seen by a quick glance, companies are leaning towards investing in Cloud servers and shared environments, or Cloud & Shared. The graph shows the forecast of the total percentage of their spending on the different types of environments over the next five years. Thus, we see that spending on Cloud & Shared between 2021 and 2026 will increase by almost 10%, from 38.6% in 2021 to a hypothetical 49.4% in 2026.
On the other hand, there will be a considerable drop in investments in non-Cloud infrastructures over the same period of time. This would fall from 44.6% in 2021 to 31.4% in 2026. A decrease of 13.2%, reflecting the increase in spending on Cloud and Shared.
Finally, investment in cloud and dedicated environments, or Cloud & Dedicated, will also grow, although not in the same way as Cloud and Shared servers. The increase will be 2.4%. Specifically from 16.8% in 2021 to 19.2% in 2026.
The Cloud market in 2022
In the current year, IDC forecasts that spending on Cloud infrastructures will grow by 21.7% compared to the previous year. Specifically, investment will reach $90 billion. In addition, non-cloud infrastructure is expected to decline slightly: by 0.3% to $59.4 billion.
Expectations indicate that Cloud & Shared infrastructure spending will increase by 25.5% compared to 2021, to around $64.5 billion for the full year. Finally, IDC believes that spending on Cloud & Dedicated infrastructure will grow by 13.1% to $25.4 billion this year.
