IDC: Public IT Cloud Spending to Hit $127B in 2018

A new forecast from International Data Corp. predicts public information technology cloud services spending will grow to more than $127 billion in 2018 from the $56.6 billion projected for 2014.

That IT cloud spending growth represents more than 50 percent of software, server and storage spending worldwide in 2018, IDC said Monday.

“Over the next four to five years, IDC expects the community of developers to triple and to create a ten-fold increase in the number of new cloud-based solutions,” said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.

Gens added that “there will be unprecedented competition and consolidation among the leading cloud providers.”

IDC cites “cloud first” initiative of IT vendors and buyers as one of the factors that spur public IT cloud services growth.

The research firm expects “an explosion of new solutions and value creation on top of the cloud” as the cloud services market enters what IDC calls an “innovation stage.”

Infrastructure-as-a-service will also reach a compound annual growth rate of 31 percent from 2014 to 2018, according to IDC.