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Cloud Computing Vendor Revenue Reached $29 Billion

Cloud computing infrastructure vendor revenue for public and private cloud grew by 21.9 percent year-over-year to reach $29 billion in 2015, with the fourth quarter (4Q15) growing 15.7 percent to $8.2 billion, according to the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Compared to overall global IT infrastructure spending, the share of cloud IT infrastructure sales climbed to 32.2 percent in 4Q15 -- that's up from 28.6 percent a year ago. Revenue from infrastructure sales to private cloud grew by 17.5 percent to $3.3 billion, and to public cloud by 14.6 percent to $4.9 billion.

By comparison, revenue in the traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure segment decreased by 2.7 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter 2015, with declines in all three technology segments (server, storage and networking).

Cloud Computing Market Development

All three technology markets showed strong year-over-year growth in both private and public cloud segments, except for storage in the public cloud, which declined 4 percent in 4Q15 on a difficult compare with a very strong quarter in the prior year.

Private cloud growth was led by Ethernet switch with 19.6 percent growth. In public cloud, Ethernet switch led the way with 56.9 percent year-on-year growth, while public cloud revenue from server grew 28.9 percent year-on-year in 4Q15.


For the full year, server revenue in private cloud grew by 23 percent year-on-year, while Ethernet switch revenue in public cloud grew by 36.6 percent during the same period.

"The cloud IT infrastructure market continues to see strong double-digit growth with faster gains coming from public cloud infrastructure demand," said Kuba Stolarski, research director at IDC. "Public cloud as-a-service offerings also continue to mature and grow in number, allowing customers to increasingly use sophisticated, mixed strategies for their deployment profiles."

Cloud Computing Regional Growth Results

From a regional perspective, vendor revenue from cloud IT infrastructure sales grew fastest in Japan at 50 percent year-over-year in 4Q15, followed by Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) at 38.7 percent, Western Europe at 30.5 percent, Canada at 23.5 percent, and the United States at 6.6 percent.

That being said, Central and Eastern Europe declined by 9.3 percent year-over-year as the region continues to go through political and economic turmoil, which ultimately impacts overall IT spending.

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