Gartner’s latest market analysis forecasts strong growth for the cloud market worldwide, but warns of inflationary pressures. Nonetheless it predicts spending on public cloud could grow to $600bn, from the current figure of $490.3bn.

Breaking the market down into segments, Gartner reckons Cloud System Infrastructure Services (IaaS) will grow 29.8% in 2023. Cloud Application Services (SaaS) could be affected by inflation due to staffing challenges and the focus on margin protection, returning slower growth at 16.8%.

“Current inflationary pressures and macroeconomic conditions are having a push and pull effect on cloud spending,” said Sid Nag, Vice President Analyst at Gartner.

“Cloud computing will continue to be a bastion of safety and innovation, supporting growth during uncertain times due to its agile, elastic and scalable nature.”

Sid Nag, Vice President Analyst, Gartner

“Cloud computing will continue to be a bastion of safety and innovation, supporting growth during uncertain times due to its agile, elastic and scalable nature.”

Accenture estimates that “92% of organizations are at least somewhat in the cloud” and that “50% of all corporate data is stored in the cloud, as of 2020”.

Organizations, including our parent company Global Relay, have recently debated whether there could be a greater role for private cloud due to public cloud being expensive. Executives are also asking if it offers the security and agility that businesses, particularly in the financial sector, need, and whether the resource implications were quite what they were led to believe.

Bad deal

Basecamp partner David Heinemeier Hansson recently announced his company’s decision to leave the public cloud. “We’ve seen all the cloud has to offer, and tried most of it. It’s finally time to conclude: Renting computers is (mostly) a bad deal for medium-sized companies like ours with stable growth,” he said, adding that the company was paying an “absurd premium”.

But Gartner’s Nag remains positive about public cloud. “Once applications and workloads move to the cloud they generally stay there, and subscription models ensure that spending will continue through the term of the contract and most likely well beyond. For these vendors, cloud spending is an annuity – the gift that keeps on giving,” he said.