The global infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market saw dramatic growth in 2019, according to research published today by Gartner, as businesses increasingly embraced the benefits of public cloud.
According to the research, the IaaS market climbed to $44.5bn in 2019, an increased of 37.3% compared to the previous year’s $32.4bn.
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Gartner also found that leaders in the industry a tightening their hold on the infrastructure as a service public cloud market, with five IaaS companies holding 80% of the market, compared to 77% in 2018.
Amazon remains the leader in this space, with Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and Tencent making up the rest of the top five. However, the leader saw its unparalleled market share slightly reduce, from 47.9% in 2018 to 45% in 2019.
The research highlights the increasing adoption of the public cloud among businesses.
“Cloud underpins the push to digital business, which remains at the top of CIOs’ agendas,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner.
“It enables technologies such as the edge, AI, machine learning and 5G, among others. At the end of the day, each of these technologies require a scalable, elastic and high-capacity infrastructure platform like public cloud IaaS, which is why the market witnessed strong growth.”
Coronavirus to drive future infrastructure as a service growth
While 2019 was a strong year for the growth of infrastructure as a service, as many businesses embraced the benefits of public cloud, the coronavirus pandemic and resulting rise in remote working is expected to further drive growth in the field.
“There will be a continued push of cloud spending as an outcome of the coronavirus pandemic,” said Nag.
“When enterprises were compelled to move their applications to the public cloud as a result of the pandemic, they realised the true benefits of public cloud and it is unlikely that they will change course.
“In the recovery and rebound phase, CIOs are recognising that they don’t need to bring workloads back on premises, which will further increase cloud spending and drive new applications around cloud-hosted collaboration that incorporate emerging technologies such as virtual reality and immersive video experiences.”
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