IT Cloud Spending Drives Infrastructure Investments: IDC

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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.