Worldwide IT Infrastructure Hardware for Public and Private Cloud 2011-2015 Forecast: Convergence and Self-Built Solutions Drive Expansion

This IDC study provides forecasts for some of the most critical new drivers of IT hardware industry development and market expansion: IT infrastructure hardware solutions for public and private clouds. It provides insights into the forces that drive combined spending on server, storage, and datacenter network hardware by public cloud service providers of all types. It also shows how demands for solutions to support compute and archive environments will shape private cloud IT infrastructure hardware requirements.

The buildout of public cloud service environments remains a critical opportunity for suppliers of server, storage, and network systems, but these customers' demands are diversifying, and their approach to purchasing IT infrastructure hardware is often quite disruptive. Total spending on these hardware systems by public cloud service providers will increase to $10.3 billion in 2015.

The IT infrastructure hardware industry is also in a position to be among the major beneficiaries of the deployment of private cloud environments. Although spending in support of compute (virtual) workloads currently accounts for a majority of the IT infrastructure hardware spend, this situation will change in the coming years as more organizations also deploy storage-heavy private cloud content and archive environments.

"The emergence of the 'cloud' as an alternative for information services delivery will be one of the most important developments in the evolution of the IT infrastructure hardware market. Suppliers in the server, storage, and network equipment industries have the potential to be among the biggest beneficiaries of this trend, but suppliers must balance growing demands from 'cloud' customers for low-cost hardware with boosting demand for advanced converged solutions targeting areas such as virtual desktops, Big Data processing, and advanced archiving services." — Richard Villars, vice president, Storage and IT Executive Strategies