Cloud infrastructure spending is growing, but at a slower pace. Nine trends will have a huge impact on tech providers. European business leaders say they won’t let even a recession stop them from spending on tech. And RPA is forecast for fast growth.
That’s some of the latest analysis and forecasts from top IT market researchers. Here’s your research roundup.
Cloud Infrastructure Spending: Rising, But More Slowly
Spending on cloud infrastructure grew 23% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022, for a worldwide total of $65.8 billion, according to market watcher Canalys.
Impressive as that growth may sound, it represents a slowdown from the previous quarter. In last year’s third quarter, cloud-infrastructure spending worldwide rose by 34% year-on-year, an 11-point difference.
Three main factors were behind the dip, Canalys says. First was rising public-cloud costs, fueled by inflation, which encouraged organizations to review, and in some cases reduce, their spending. Second was uncertainty over the economy. And a third was “repatriation,” the act of taking certain workloads from the public cloud and returning them to private or co-location data centers.
By supplier, the cloud infrastructure market remained dominated by three big names, according to Canalys. In Q4:22, AWS led with a 32% market share, followed by Microsoft Azure (23%) and Google Cloud (10%). That left miscellaneous “others” with a collective 35% share.
9 Top Trends for Tech Providers
Nine trends will matter for tech providers through 2025, predicts research firm Gartner. These trends reflect 3 overarching themes: the increasing reliance of businesses on technology; new opportunities emerging through tech; and the impact of external macro forces. “The march of digitization continues even amidst disruption,” says Gartner researcher Rajesh Kandaswamy.
Here are Gartner’s top 9 trends for tech providers:
1. Democratization of Technology: Organizations are empowering non-IT workers to seek, implement and custom-fit their own tech.
2. Federated Enterprise Tech Buying: Buying decisions are increasingly made not by IT alone, but instead by representatives across the business.
3. Product-led Growth: This go-to-market strategy lets customers gain value via free product offers and interactive demos.
4. Co-innovation Ecosystems: Businesses and their tech providers collaborate to create unique, innovative solutions.
5. Digital Marketplaces: These help both technical and nontechnical buyers find, buy, implement and integrate technologies with ease.
6. Intelligent Applications: Advanced technologies such as generative AI create value and disrupt markets by learning, adapting and generating new ideas and outcomes.
7. Metaverse/Web3: Virtual environments are gaining traction as organizations look to create unique experiences, interactions and engagements.
8. Sustainability: Customers increasingly view sustainable products and practices as a “must have” rather than just a “nice to have.”
9. Techno-Nationalism: Selected regional markets are becoming more localized as new governmental policies aim for digital sovereignty.
Euro IT Spending: What Recession?
The European technology market is huge and growing.
Total IT spending in Europe will hit $1.2 trillion this year, predicts IDC. Looking ahead, the market intelligence firm expects that figure to top $1.4 trillion by 2026.
For the years 2021 to 2026, total IT spending in Europe will represent a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.4%, IDC expects. For this year alone, IDC predicts the year-on-year spending rise will be a somewhat lower 4.2%.
One remarkable aspect is that the forecasted spending rise comes as most European business leaders expect a recession. Nonetheless, IT spending will remain high, says IDC researcher Zsolt Simon, because European business leaders “regard technology investments as a means of gaining a competitive edge.”
By industry, banking remains Europe’s largest spender on IT, representing nearly 14% of all, says IDC. Looking ahead a few years, IDC expects the fastest-growing spender between now and 2026 will be professional services.
RPA Market Forecast: 40% Growth
Robotic process automation—software that makes it easy to build, deploy and manage software robots—is more than just a good idea. It’s also a booming market.
RPA sales worldwide will total $30.85 billion by 2030, representing a CAGR of nearly 40%, according to forecasts by Grand View Research.
New RPA sales will be driven primarily by customers looking to lower their operating costs, Grand View expects. But other goals for RPA include improved compliance and higher worker productivity.
In addition, the technology has gotten easier to use, even for complex processes. That should make RPA more attractive to potential customers, and more useful for them too.