Global revenue of $400 billion by 2025 forecast for IaaS and PaaS markets - IDC report

IDC has published a report forecasting the IaaS and PaaS markets will have combined revenues of $400 billion by 2025.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) has published a new forecast for the global public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) markets. The report, Worldwide Public Cloud IaaS and PaaS Workloads Forecast, 2021–2025, found the combined public cloud IaaS and PaaS markets are forecast to have revenues of $400 billion in 2025 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.8% during the 2021-2025 forecast period.

Application development and testing, structured data management, and structured data analytics will be the largest workload segments by revenue share. Unstructured data analytics/data management and media streaming are forecast to be the fastest-growing segments with CAGRs of 41.9% and 41.2%, respectively.

Other business applications, file and print, and content applications will grow slower than the overall market average while still delivering double-digit growth throughout the forecast period.

"Enterprise spending on public cloud infrastructure continues to grow faster than traditional IT infrastructure segments," says Cloud Infrastructure Services research manager, Andrew Smith.

"We expect all workload segments to grow in double digits, some slightly faster than others, as enterprises continue to prioritise workload migration and modernisation using public cloud infrastructure."

Cloud IaaS and PaaS is a critical component for the future of digital infrastructure. It is highly dependent on the ability of complex, connected cloud infrastructure to self-regulate and dynamically optimise itself in response to real-time changes in resource demand, application performance, and end-user experience.

By 2022, IDC anticipates almost half an enterprise's products and services will be digital or digitally delivered, increasing business reliance on infrastructure (compute, storage, networking) to support more than traditional business applications. Timely access to innovative infrastructure resources, shared and dedicated, will be imperative to sustain the adaptive, resilient, secure, and compliant digital business models of the future.

Trends driving workload growth within this market include:

• Public cloud services remaining an essential part of enterprise recovery strategy as IT organisations re-evaluate budgets, build infrastructure focused on business resilience, and work toward managing risk in a post-COVID-19 world.
• Enterprises shifting from workload migration to workload modernisation on public cloud. In 2020, IaaS buyers increasingly prioritised application modernisation efforts, viewing modernisation as an integral component of agile application delivery and cloud operations.
• Relentless enterprise data growth continuing to push many workloads to the public cloud as enterprises look to effectively manage data growth and their IT budget.