It’s time to consider performance intensive computing as a service. Get ready for a modest spending surge. And be on the lookout for new data-center components.
Those are takeaways from the latest in IT market research and analysis. And here’s your tech partner’s roundup.
Performance intensive computing: now as a service
If you don’t offer cloud-based performance intensive computing as a service, you might want to consider doing so. The market, already big, is growing fast.
Sales of performance intensive computing as a service (PICaaS) will rise from $22.3 billion worldwide in 2021 to $103 billion by 2027, predicts market watcher IDC. That’s a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 28%.
With PICaaS, customers use public cloud services to run the mathematically intensive computations needed for AI, HPC, big data analytics, and engineering and technical applications.
Driving the market are two factors, IDC says. One, performance intensive computing is going mainstream and is increasingly mission critical. And two, a growing number of businesses define themselves as digital.
What can you do to get ready for this market? Among other tactics, IDC recommends that suppliers formulate an end-to-end bundled PICaaS offering, demonstrate a secure cloud infrastructure, and become trusted advisors of hybrid development models.
Strong IT spending — this year and next
What kind of year will 2023 shape up to be? If your customers are like most, pretty good. Overall IT spending will rise this year by 5.5%, reaching a grand total of $4.6 trillion, predicts analyst firm Gartner, and some segments will rise by much more.
But what about sales dips, tech layoffs and other financial issues? “Macroeconomic headwinds are not slowing digital transformation,” insists Gartner analyst John-David Lovelock. “IT spending will remain strong.”
On the hardware front, Gartner expects data center systems sales worldwide this year to rise by less than 4%. Next year looks better with a projected rise of about 6%.
IT services are in demand. Sales will rise by just over 9% this year, Gartner forecasts, and by about 10% next year.
Devices such as PCs and smartphones are a weak point, with sales projected to drop by nearly 5% this year after tumbling nearly 11% last year. Next year, sales should pick up, Gartner expects, rising an impressive 11%.
New components coming to customer data centers
Have you and your data-center customers spoken yet about three components—SmartNICs, data processing units (DPUs) and infrastructure processing units (IPUs)?
If not, you probably will soon, according to ABI Research. Demand for these components is being driven by two factors: specialized workloads such as AI, IoT and 5G; and the rise of cloud hyperscalers such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
“Organizations are exploring the feasibility of running specific applications that require high processing power on public-cloud data centers to ensure business continuity,” says ABI analyst Yih-Khai Wong.
Big opportunities include networks, cloud platforms and security. For example, AMD’s Xilinx Alveo line of adaptable accelerator cards includes the industry’s first software-defined, hardware-accelerated SmartNIC.
To be sure, the shift is still in its early stages. But Wong says servers equipped by default with SmartNICs, DPUs or IPUs are coming “sooner rather than later.”