Worldwide spending on public cloud services reached $545.8 billion in 2022, new data from IDC says. Global revenue generated by public cloud services topped the $500 billion mark in 2022, according to new data released this week by research firm IDC. The actual figure was $545.8 billion, IDC’s research found, a sum that represents a 22.9% increase over the previous year. Foundational cloud services — which IDC defines as infrastructure, platform and system infrastructure software delivered as services — grew even more quickly, rising by 28.8% in year-on-year terms. This foundational spending, according to IDC, reflects the growing dependence organizations have on data and AI services, distributed computing and app frameworks. Spending on IaaS and PaaS, in particular, should continue to grow more quickly than the overall public cloud market, which cloud providers have reacted to by deploying increasingly high-performance infrastructure. “This serves two purposes,” said IDC research vice president Dave McCarthy in the report. “First, it unlocks the next wave of migration for enterprise applications that have previously remained on-premises. Second, it creates the foundation for new AI software that can be quickly deployed at scale. In both cases, these investments are resulting in market growth opportunities.” IDC’s data also show a continuing consolidation in the public cloud market. Although the top five public cloud services providers account for less than half of the marketplace, their revenue grew faster than the market at large, at 27.3% last year. Microsoft is the largest public cloud provider in the world, according to IDC’s information, accounting for 16.8% of the overall market, followed closely by AWS, at 13.5%. (Salesforce, Google and Oracle rounded out the top five.) One of the chief drivers of new public cloud spending will be generative AI, IDC’s researchers said. AI capabilities are likely to be a central consideration for most organizations in the immediate future, and the importance of public cloud to any potential AI offering cannot be overstated. “IDC research shows that most organizations rank their public cloud provider as their most strategic technology partner,” said research director Lara Greden, in the IDC report. “When it comes to planning for PaaS developer and data services, organizations that haven’t yet begun their journeys in developing AI-enabled applications are beginning to prioritize them. Those that have started to adopt AI are finding themselves well positioned to evaluate further adoption of generative AI capabilities in an intelligent app-strategy.” The single largest area of spending in 2022, according to IDC, was SaaS applications, clocking in at $246.3 billion in revenue, followed by IaaS at $115.5 billion. Related content analysis With three zero-days, it’s a patch-now Patch Tuesday for May This is one of those months where it’s important to roll out Microsoft’s latest round of fixes as soon as you can. By Greg Lambert May 17, 2024 9 mins Microsoft Windows 10 Windows Security opinion Review: The M4 iPad Pro — an amazing AI PC Light, thin, and indiscreetly powerful, Apple's new iPad Pro will be seen as more than just a tablet once Apple introduces genAI in iPadOS. By Jonny Evans May 17, 2024 11 mins iPad Apple iOS news Citrix parent mulls selling ShareFile amid streamlining efforts The disinvestment of ShareFile is seen as a strategic move by Cloud Software Group to refocus on its core competencies. By Gyana Swain May 17, 2024 3 mins Citrix Systems Collaboration Software news Google brings Gemini AI to the classroom Google is making its Gemini AI assistant available for Workspace for Education customers beginning on May 23. By Matthew Finnegan May 17, 2024 4 mins Education Industry Generative AI Google Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe