This article is more than 1 year old
30 per cent of servers, storage and switches now sold to clouds
US$16.5 billion spent on public cloud alone in 2014 says IDC
Three in ten servers, storage arrays and ethernet switches are now being sold to clouds, either private or public, says abacus-wielder IDC.
The company's Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker for 2014's fourth quarter found that “total cloud IT infrastructure spending grew by 14.4% year over year to $8.0 billion”, accounting for 30 per cent of all IT infrastructure spend. That's up from
Across the entire year, the market-watcher reckons “cloud IT infrastructure spending totaled $26.4 billion, up 18.7% year over year from $22.3 billion; private cloud spending was just under $10.0 billion, up 20.7% year over year, while public cloud spending was $16.5 billion, up 17.5% year over year.”
The big winners from all that cash-splashing looks to have been the original design manufacturers (ODMs) cranking out white box kit. IDC reckons ODMs scored $6.6bn of the global cloud spend last year. The firm doesn't rank individual ODMs, but does offer guesstimates for vendor sales. Here's how that stacks up:
Top 5 Corporate Family, Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Vendor Revenue, Calendar Year 2014 (Revenues are in Billions)
|
Vendor |
2014 Revenue |
2014 Market Share |
2013 Revenue |
2013 Market Share |
2014/2013 Revenue Growth |
|
1. HP |
$3.7 |
15.7% |
$3.5 |
17.4% |
6.3% |
|
2. Dell |
$2.6 |
10.7% |
$2.4 |
11.8% |
7.2% |
|
2. Cisco |
$2.1 |
8.7% |
$1.7 |
8.5% |
21.2% |
|
4. EMC |
$1.9 |
8.0% |
$1.4 |
7.1% |
34.3% |
|
5. IBM* |
$1.7 |
7.3% |
$2.2 |
10.7% |
-18.9%* |
|
ODM Direct |
$6.6 |
27.8% |
$4.8 |
23.9% |
37.3% |
|
Others |
$5.2 |
21.7% |
$4.2 |
20.7% |
4.7% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total |
$23.9 |
100% |
$20.2 |
100% |
17.9% |
IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, April 2015
*IBM's divestiture of its x86 business to Lenovo on October 1, 2014 has a negative impact on year-over-year comparisons for 2014.
As that chart shows, Cisco, EMC and ODMs are doing very well indeed out of this cloud caper, be it private or public, while IBM, HP and Dell are picking up the occasional table scrap. If correct, this analysis suggests Cisco and EMC are doing very well on the strategy front. The former has made lots of noise about the internet of things, and IDC reckons the growth in cloud infrastructure is driven by the internet of things, which creates a need for large-scale, highly automated rigs. EMC's got lots of irons in the fire when it comes to data centre automation and private cloud.
It looks like there's more growth to come, too, as Q4 “public cloud infrastructure spending grew to $5.0 billion, 12.3% higher than one year ago.” If that rate holds, we're looking at over $20 billion of public cloud kit in 2015. Which is, to use a technical term, rather a lot! ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
