Public cloud has silver lining

Public cloud service spending will grow 21.7 per cent to $597.3 billion in 2023, according to beancounters and number crunchers at analyst outfit Gartner.

Cloud computing going to drive the next phase of digital business, as organisations pursue disruption through emerging technologies like generative artificial intelligence (AI), Web3 and the metaverse, Big G said.

Gartner VP Sid Nag said hyperscale cloud providers were driving the cloud agenda as organisations today view it as a strategic platform for digital transformation. This requires cloud providers to offer more sophisticated capabilities as the competition for digital services improves.

“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,” said Nag.

“Cloud offers the perfect solution and platform. It is no coincidence that the key players in the generative AI race are cloud hyperscalers.”

According to the research, 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.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, 75 per cent of organisations 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. 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 $197 billion in 2023.