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Spending on public clouds is estimated to grow by the end of 2020, with desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) anticipated to be the biggest beneficiary of the increase in demand.
In Australia, spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow by 12.3 per cent in 2020, to $8.9 billion.
This is higher than the global average, with spending predicted to grow worldwide by 6.3 per cent, to US$257.9 billion, over the same period, according to research firm Gartner.
Within the market segments that make up public cloud, spending in the DaaS market is set for the largest rise with a 2020 forecast of 92.3 per cent.
This is slightly below the global DaaS segment of 95.4 per cent, to US$1.2 billion, with Gartner analysis pointing to it as “an inexpensive option” for enterprises to support remote workers, keeping their access secure in the process.
Sig Nag, research vice president at Gartner, said the cloud market successfully responded to an increase of demand, particular for elastic, pay-as-you-go consumption models.
“When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there were a few initial hiccups but cloud ultimately delivered exactly what it was supposed to,” he said.
“Any debate around the utility of public cloud has been put aside since the onset of COVID-19. For the remainder of 2020, organisations that expand remote work functionality will prioritise collaboration software, mobile device management, distance learning educational solutions and security, as well as the infrastructure to scale to support increased capacity.”
On a global scale, software-as-a-service (SaaS) is still the largest market segment, with spending forecast to grow to US$104.7 billion in 2020 due to a shift in the market to subscription-based SaaS models and collaborative tools during COVID-19.
Next is infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) with a predicted spending growth of 13.4 per cent, to US$50.4 billion, driven by the economic downfall caused by the coronavirus pandemic pushing organisations away from legacy infrastructure operating models.
The positive growth in public cloud spending is largely an outlier to 2020 forecasts when compared to overall IT spending, with previous research firms claiming that declines should be expected on the whole.
