Cloud-enabling hardware in demand for enterprises

A new market survey has found that cloud-enabling hardware for public and private use is in high demand among enterprises, with the total revenue generated by sales swelling to twice the level seen in 2013.

According to the latest IDC cloud IT infrastructure market tracker report, the demand for servers, storage and Ethernet switches that enable public and private cloud services has soared in 2017, with sales in the sector topping $11.3 billion (£8.2 billion) in the third quarter of the year.

This represents a 25.5 per cent uptick when compared with the same period in 2016. IDC writes that this demand is likely driven mostly by public cloud providers who are hoping to “kit out” their datacentres in the face of growing interest in off-premises services.

Indeed, money generated by public cloud-enabling infrastructure products grew 32.3 per cent on an annual basis, worth $7.7 billion in the third quarter of 2017.

IDC also estimates that just under a third – 30.2 per cent – of all IT infrastructure spending was used to buy servers, storage and Ethernet products that have been used to fuel public cloud projects. For private environments, meanwhile, year-on-year revenue grew by 13.1 per cent to reach $3.6 billion.

It’s not just the cloud that enterprises are spending more on, however: non-cloud IT infrastructure sales grew by 8 per cent since 2016 to be worth $14.2 billion, representing 55.6 per cent of the total hardware spend recorded around the world.

Kuba Stolarski, IDC’s research director for computing platforms, pointed out that although the market’s biggest players, such as Amazon and Google, are driving the “lion’s share” of the growth, providers in the lower tiers are also showing strong improvement.

She added: “In the near term, new Intel and AMD platforms released during 2017 should aid in refresh and infrastructure expansion throughout the cloud IT infrastructure segment.”