Fresh data from analyst group IDC shows the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan and China (APeJC) posted the highest year-on-year growth in cloud infrastructure spending last year, with 43.7%. But the firm predicted a different region will take the top spot in 2022.
In 2021, APeJC was followed by Canada, Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, and China, which all recorded double-digit growth. Japan trailed with high single digit-growth while Western Europe posted low single-digit growth and the U.S. recorded a 1.5% increase. Latin America was the only region to decline year on year. All told, cloud infrastructure spending rose 8.8% to $73.9 billion in 2021.
The APeJC region’s lead was even more pronounced in Q4 2021, when it posted 59.5% growth year on year, compared to 5.6% in the U.S. A recent report from Synergy Research Group showed that Amazon led the cloud services market in most of the APAC region as of Q4, including in Japan, South and Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the rest of East Asia. The Chinese market was dominated by Alibaba.
Looking ahead, IDC indicated the U.S. is expected to lead the pack with 27.8% growth for the full year 2022. Meanwhile, Central and Eastern Europe is forecast to be the only region facing a decline this year. For the full year, spending is expected to grow 21.7% to $90 billion.
“As backlogs continue to grow, pent-up demand bodes well for future growth as long as the economy stays healthy, and supply catches up to demand,” IDC noted in a press release.
A majority of spending in 2022 is expected to be devoted to shared cloud infrastructure, with sales here expected to grow 25.5% to $64.5 billion. Meanwhile, IDC forecast dedicated cloud infrastructure spending will increase 13.1% to $25.4 billion.
By 2026, IDC predicted spending on compute and storage cloud infrastructure will reach $133.7 billion, with shared cloud infrastructure accounting for nearly three-quarters (72%) of this amount.