Australians are forecast to spend $1.7 billion on cloud services in 2018, according to a new report by the International Data Corporation (IDC).
IDC’s Australia Ecosystem Study 2014 predicts infrastructure as a service (IaaS) spending will reach almost double the $909.2 million spent in 2014. This would equate to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.2 per cent.
Raj Mudaliar, senior market analyst, IT & cloud services research at IDC Australia, believes the growth is due to the rise in innovation accelerators.
“As we look ahead to 2015 and beyond, the industry is entering the most critical period yet in the 3rd Platform era: the “innovation stage,” primarily characterized by value creation across industries and a new wave of core technologies (innovation accelerators such as Internet of things (IoT), cognitive systems, pervasive robotics, 3D printing, and so forth) that radically extend the 3rd Platforms’ capabilities and applications”, Mr Mudaliar said.
The study points towards a changing foundation of business processes. A growing number of organisations are now using cloud services as a key component in delivering a richer customer experience, with advanced analytics, collaboration capabilities and new technologies just some of the elements driving digital business goals.
Spending on cloud services is expected to grow around 8 times the overall IT services market, with platform as a service (PaaS) and cloud storage services forecast to grow at 40.3 per cent and 31.7 per cent CAGR, respectively.
Business continuity and disaster recovery solutions, business analytics, infrastructure, IT service management, and security were revealed to be the top five IT categories that reflected an increase in spending intentions during 2015.
