Global Cloud Infrastructure spending down after 6 quarters of growth

Global spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud infrastructure, including dedicated and shared environments, decreased 2.4 per cent year over year (YoY) in the second quarter of 2021 to $16.8 billion, according to a new report.

This decrease comes after six quarters of YoY growth, and most notably compares to the 39.1 per cent annual growth seen by the market in the second quarter (Q2) last year, when the world just entered the pandemic, said the report by the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Investments in non-cloud infrastructure, however, increased 3.4 per cent in Q2 to $13.4 billion, recovering from a 7.2 per cent decline in Q2 2020.

"Despite weakness in Q2 2021, IDC is forecasting cloud infrastructure spending to grow 12 per cent to $74.3 billion for 2021, while non-cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 2.7 per cent to $58.9 billion after two years of declines," the report mentioned.

Top companies in the global Cloud infrastructure market are Dell Technologies (leading with 15.5 per cent market share), HPE/H3C, Inspur, Lenovo and Huawei.

Shared cloud infrastructure is expected to grow by 11.1 per cent YoY to $51.4 billion for the full year and spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 14.1 per cent to $22.8 billion for the full year.


Weakness in year-over-year demand from public cloud service providers comes after an exceptionally strong Q2 2020, in which spending increased 55.5 per cent driven by the spike in demand for cloud services in the first months of the pandemic.

IDC expects to see continuously strong demand for shared cloud infrastructure with shared cloud infrastructure spending surpassing non-cloud infrastructure spending by 2022 - IANS