Investments in cloud computing to grow 50% in the next 4 years

The popularity of cloud computing will not be slowing anytime soon, as the next four years will see a 50 percent investment in cloud technology.

Some 28 percent of spending within key enterprise IT markets will shift to the cloud by 2022, up from 19 percent in 2018, according to a new report from research firm Gartner.

Growth in enterprise IT spending on cloud-based services will be faster than growth in traditional, non-cloud IT offerings, the study said. Despite this growth, traditional offerings will still account for 72 percent of the addressable revenue for enterprise IT markets in 2022, Gartner said.

cloud spending.jpg“The shift of enterprise IT spending to new, cloud-based alternatives is relentless, although it’s occurring over the course of many years due to the nature of traditional enterprise IT,” said Michael Warrilow, research vice president at Gartner. “Cloud shift highlights the appeal of greater flexibility and agility, which is perceived as a benefit of on-demand capacity and pay-as-you-go pricing in cloud.”

More than $1.3 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the move to the cloud by 2022. The largest cloud shift prior to 2018 occurred in application software, particularly driven by customer relationship management (CRM). CRM has already reached a point where a higher proportion of spending occurs in cloud than in traditional software.

This trend will continue and expand to cover other application software segments, including office suites, content services and collaboration services, through to the end of 2022, the report said. Application software will retain the highest percentage of cloud shift during this period.