Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 21.7 per cent to total US$597.3 billion in 2023, up from US$491 billion in 2022, a forecast released today by Gartner, Inc. reveals.

According to the research firm, cloud computing is driving the next phase of digital business, as organizations pursue disruption through emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), Web3 and the metaverse.

“Hyperscale cloud providers are driving the cloud agenda,” said Sid Nag, vice president analyst at Gartner. “Organizations 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.

“For example, generative AI is supported by large language models (LLMs), which require powerful and highly scalable computing capabilities to process data in real-time. Cloud offers the perfect solution and platform. It is no coincidence that the key players in the generative AI race are cloud hyperscalers.”

All segments of the cloud market are expected see growth in 2023. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is forecast to experience the highest end-user spending growth in 2023, at 30.9 per cent, followed by platform-as-a-service (PaaS) at 24.1 per cent (see Table 1).

Table 1. Worldwide Public Cloud Services End-User Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

 
2022
2023
2024

Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS)
111,976
138,962
170,355

Cloud Application Services (SaaS)
167,342
197,288
232,296

Cloud Business Process Services (BPaaS)
59,861
65,240
71,063

Cloud Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)
2,525
3,122
3,535

Cloud Management and Security Services
34,487
42,401
51,871

Cloud System Infrastructure Services (IaaS)
114,786
150,310
195,446

Total Market
490,977
597,325
724,566

BPaaS = business process as a service; IaaS = infrastructure as a service; PaaS = platform as a service; SaaS = software as a service Note: Totals may not add up due to rounding. Source: Gartner (April 2023)

Gartner predicts that by 2026, 75 per cent of organizations will adopt a digital transformation model predicated on cloud as the fundamental underlying platform.

“The next phase of IaaS growth will be driven by customer experience, digital and business outcomes and the virtual-first world,” said Nag. “Emerging technologies that help businesses interact more closely and in real time with their customers, such as chatbots and digital twins, are reliant upon cloud infrastructure and platform services to meet growing demands for compute and storage power.”

While cloud infrastructure and platform services are driving the highest spending growth, SaaS remains the largest segment of the cloud market by end-user spending. SaaS spending is projected to grow 17.9 per cent to total US$197 billion in 2023.

Nag pointed out that “the technology substrate of cloud computing is firmly dominated by the hyperscalers, but 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.”

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