Spending on Public Cloud IT Infrastructure Surpasses Spending on Traditional IT Infrastructure for the First Time in the Second Quarter of 2020, According to IDC

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#Ethernetswitch–According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, vendor revenue from sales of IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud environments, including public and private cloud, increased 34.4% year over year in the second quarter of 2020 (2Q20). Investments in traditional, non-cloud, IT infrastructure declined 8.7% year over year in 2Q20.

These growth rates show the market response to major adjustments in business, educational, and societal activities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the role IT infrastructure plays in these adjustments. Across the world, there were massive shifts to online tools in all aspects of human life, including collaboration, virtual business events, entertainment, shopping, telemedicine, and education. Cloud environments, and particularly public cloud, were a key enabler of this shift. Spending on public cloud IT infrastructure increased 47.8% year over year in 2Q20, reaching $14.1 billion and exceeding the level of spend on non-cloud IT infrastructure for the first time. Spending on private cloud infrastructure increased 7% year over year in 2Q20 to $5 billion with on-premises private clouds accounting for 64.1% of this amount.

IDC believes the hardware infrastructure market has reached the tipping point and cloud environments will continue to account for an increasingly higher share of overall spending. While IDC increased its forecast for both cloud and non-cloud IT spending for the full year 2020, investments in cloud IT infrastructure are still expected to exceed spending on non-cloud infrastructure, 54.8% to 45.2%. Most of the increase in spending will be driven by public cloud IT infrastructure, which is expected to slow in 2H20 but increase by 16% year over year to $52.4 billion for the full year. Spending on private cloud infrastructure will also experience softness in the second half of the year and will reach $21.5 billion for the full year, an increase of just 0.3% year over year.

As of 2019, the dominance of cloud IT environments over non-cloud already existed for compute platforms and Ethernet switches while the majority of newly shipped storage platforms were still residing in non-cloud environments. Starting in 2020, with increased investments from public cloud providers on storage platforms, this shift will remain persistent across all three technology domains. Within cloud deployment environments in 2020, compute platforms will remain the largest segment (50.9%) of spending at $37.7 billion while storage platforms will be the fastest growing segment with spending increasing 21.2% to $27.8 billion, and the Ethernet switch segment will grow 3.9% year over year to $8.5 billion.

Spending on cloud IT infrastructure increased across all regions in 2Q20 with the two largest regions, China and the U.S., delivering the highest annual growth rates at 60.5% and 36.9% respectively. In all regions except Central & Eastern Europe and the Middle East & Africa, growth in public cloud infrastructure exceeded growth in private cloud IT.

At the vendor level, the results were mixed. Inspur more than doubled its revenue from sales to cloud environments, climbing into a tie* for the second position in the vendor rankings while the group of original design manufacturers (ODM Direct) grew 63.6% year over year. Lenovo’s revenue exceeded $1 billion, growing at 49.3% year over year.

Top Companies, Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Vendor Revenue, Market Share, and Year-Over-Year Growth, Q2 2020 (Revenues are in Millions)
Company	2Q20 Revenue (US$M)	2Q20 Market Share		2Q19 Revenue (US$M)	2Q19 Market Share		2Q20/2Q19 Revenue Growth
1. Dell Technologies	$2,506	13.2	%	$2,330	16.5	%	7.5	%
T2. HPE/New H3C Group* **	$1,981	10.4	%	$1,770	12.5	%	12.0	%
T2. Inspur/Inspur Power Systems* *******	$1,917	10.1	%	$812	5.7	%	136.0	%
T4. Lenovo*	$1,087	5.7	%	$728	5.1	%	49.3	%
T4. Cisco*	$941	5.0	%	$1,066	7.5	%	-11.7	%
ODM Direct	$6,656	35.0	%	$4,069	28.8	%	63.6	%
Others	$3,925	20.6	%	$3,371	23.8	%	16.4	%
Total	$19,013	100.0	%	$14,147	100.0	%	34.4	%
IDC’s Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, Q2 2020

Notes:

* IDC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide cloud IT infrastructure market when there is a difference of one percent or less in the vendor revenue shares among two or more vendors.

** Due to the existing joint venture between HPE and the New H3C Group, IDC reports external market share on a global level for HPE as “HPE/New H3C Group” starting from Q2 2016 and going forward.

*** Due to the existing joint venture between IBM and Inspur, IDC reports external market share on a global level for Inspur and Inspur Power Systems as “Inspur/Inspur Power Systems” starting from 3Q 2018.

In addition to the table above, a graphic illustrating the worldwide market share of the top 5 cloud IT infrastructure companies in 2Q20 and 2Q19 is available by viewing this press release on IDC.com.

Long term, IDC expects spending on cloud IT infrastructure to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.4%, reaching $109.3 billion in 2024 and accounting for 63.6% of total IT infrastructure spend. Public cloud datacenters will account for 69.4% of this amount, growing at a 10.9% CAGR. Spending on private cloud infrastructure will grow at a CAGR of 9.3%. Spending on non-cloud IT infrastructure will rebound after 2020 but will continue to decline overall with a CAGR of -1.6%.

A graphic illustrating IDC’s worldwide cloud IT infrastructure forecast by deployment type (public cloud, private cloud, and traditional IT) is available by viewing this press release on IDC.com.

IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker is designed to provide clients with a better understanding of what portion of the server, disk storage systems, and networking hardware markets are being deployed in cloud environments. The Tracker breaks out each vendors’ revenue by the hardware technology market into public and private cloud environments for historical data and provides a five-year forecast by the technology market. This Tracker is part of the Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker, which provides a holistic total addressable market view of the five key enabling infrastructure technologies for the datacenter (servers, external enterprise storage systems, purpose-built appliances: HCI and PBBA, and datacenter switches).

Taxonomy Notes

IDC defines cloud services more formally through a checklist of key attributes that an offering must manifest to end users of the service. Public cloud services are shared among unrelated enterprises and consumers; open to a largely unrestricted universe of potential users; and designed for a market, not a single enterprise. The public cloud market includes variety of services designed to extend or, in some cases, replace IT infrastructure deployed in corporate datacenters. It also includes content services delivered by a group of suppliers IDC calls Value Added Content Providers (VACP). Private cloud services are shared within a single enterprise or an extended enterprise with restrictions on access and level of resource dedication and defined/controlled by the enterprise (and beyond the control available in public cloud offerings); can be onsite or offsite; and can be managed by a third-party or in-house staff. In private cloud that is managed by in-house staff, “vendors (cloud service providers)” are equivalent to the IT departments/shared service departments within enterprises/groups. In this utilization model, where standardized services are jointly used within the enterprise/group, business departments, offices, and employees are the “service users.”

IDC defines Compute Platforms as compute intensive servers. Storage Platforms includes storage intensive servers as well as external storage and storage expansion (JBOD) systems. Storage intensive servers are defined based on high storage media density. Servers with low storage density are defined as compute intensive systems. Storage Platforms does not include internal storage media from compute intensive servers. There is no overlap in revenue between Compute Platforms and Storage Platforms, in contrast with IDC’s Server Tracker and Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, which include overlaps in portions of revenue associated with server-based storage.

For more information about IDC’s Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, please contact Lidice Fernandez at lfernandez@idc.com.

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