Spending for cloud IT represented nearly a third of IT infrastructure spending in first quarter 2015, according to a report from IDC.

Larry Loeb, Blogger, Informationweek

July 6, 2015

2 Min Read
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Spending for cloud IT represented nearly 30% of overall IT infrastructure investments in first quarter 2015, up from 26.4% in the same period a year ago, according to a July 2 report from International Data Corporation (IDC).

In comparison, spending in the non-cloud IT infrastructure segment increased by only 6.1% in the first quarter over the same period in 2014, largely driven by increased sales of servers. Storage sales declined, and sales of Ethernet switches were essentially flat (up 1%) in first quarter 2015 compared with first quarter 2014.

The IDC report measures how much money is flowing into cloud infrastructure right now. While the report is a snapshot of a market in flux, it is very useful for the CIO or IT staff trying to plan capital budgets.

[ Where else are the IT dollars going? Read IT Spending Reports Show A Tech Market In Transition. ]

According to IDC, worldwide vendor revenues from the sale of cloud IT infrastructure products grew 25.1% to nearly $6.3 billion in first quarter 2015 compared with the same period a year ago.

IDC defines cloud IT infrastructure products as server, storage, and Ethernet switches for public and private cloud installations, both in-house and off-premises. Sales of servers showed the greatest growth of the three categories in first quarter 2015 compared to the same period a year ago. Revenue from sales of servers for private cloud installations increased 28% in first quarter 2015 compared with first quarter 2014, while revenue from server sales for public cloud installations increased 33% in the same time-frame.

Overall, both public and private cloud installations showed continued growth. "Private and public cloud infrastructures have been growing at a similar pace, suggesting that customers are open to a broad array of hybrid deployment scenarios as [companies] modernize their IT," said Kuba Stolarski, IDC's research manager for server, virtualization and workload research in a statement.

IDC names five vendors as the leaders in revenue and marketshare for first quarter 2015. HP topped the list for first quarter 2015, with $985 million in sales and 15.7% marketshare, followed by Dell ($745 million revenue, 11.9% marketshare), Cisco ($582 million revenue, 7.2% marketshare), and EMC ($450 million revenue, 7.2% marketshare). Fifth place was declared a tie between NetApp ($273 million revenue, 4.4% marketshare) and Lenovo ($226 million revenue, 3.4% marketshare), since the figures did not differ by more than 1%. IDC also noted that IBM's sale of its x86 business to Lenovo in October 2014 caused a 770% jump revenue for Lenovo between first quarter 2014 and first quarter 2015.

About the Author(s)

Larry Loeb

Blogger, Informationweek

Larry Loeb has written for many of the last century's major "dead tree" computer magazines, having been, among other things, a consulting editor for BYTE magazine and senior editor for the launch of WebWeek. He has written a book on the Secure Electronic Transaction Internet protocol. His latest book has the commercially obligatory title of Hack Proofing XML. He's been online since uucp "bang" addressing (where the world existed relative to !decvax), serving as editor of the Macintosh Exchange on BIX and the VARBusiness Exchange. His first Mac had 128 KB of memory, which was a big step up from his first 1130, which had 4 KB, as did his first 1401. You can e-mail him at [email protected].

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