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Cloud IT Spending Has Outpaced 'Traditional IT' Spending

Revenues from IT infrastructure products sold to cloud service providers have surpassed revenues from traditional IT infrastructure sales "for the first time," according to a recently published report by IDC.

The report, "Worldwide Quarterly IT Infrastructure" database, covers the third quarter of 2018. Fourth-quarter data apparently haven't been published yet.

IDC examined revenues from cloud IT infrastructure spending in Q3 2018 based on server, storage and Ethernet switch sales.

Cloud IT infrastructure sales accounted for slightly more than half (50.9 percent) of the "total worldwide IT infrastructure vendor revenues" in Q3 2018, according to IDC. However, when estimated for the full 2018 year, IDC expects that figure will drop to around 47.4 percent.

However, IDC expects that cloud IT infrastructure sales will exceed traditional IT infrastructure sales in the next few years.

"By 2022, we expect that traditional non-cloud IT infrastructure will only represent 42.4% of total worldwide IT infrastructure spending (down from 52.6% in 2018)," the announcement indicated.

IDC's data also show public cloud spending overtaking private cloud spending. In Q3 2018, public cloud spending reached $12.1 billion, representing a 56.1 percent boost when compared year over year. Private cloud spending during the same quarter reached $4.7 billion, representing a 28.3 percent year-over-year growth rate, according to IDC data.

According to IDC, the top IT infrastructure sellers in Q3 2018 included Dell ($2.4 billion in revenue), HPE/H3C ($1.6 billion), Cisco ($1 billion), Inspur ($1 billion) and Lenovo ($810 million). Future spending growth will mostly be seen on the compute platform side, according to IDC.

Overall cloud IT infrastructure spending is expected to reach "$88.6 billion in 2022," representing "57.6% of total IT infrastructure spend," IDC noted, adding that most of that spending (66.3 percent) will occur on the public cloud datacenter side.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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