Gartner disclosed inevitable trends shaping the future of the public cloud. According to Gartner, Inc., four new cloud computing trends continue to broaden the breadth of cloud products and capabilities, boosting growth across all public cloud services industry segments. The four trends are cloud ubiquity, regional cloud ecosystems, sustainability and carbon-intelligent cloud, and automated programmable infrastructure from cloud infrastructure and platform service (CIPS) providers.
“The economic, organizational and societal impact of the pandemic will continue to serve as a catalyst for digital innovation and adoption of cloud services,” said Henrique Cecci, senior research director at Gartner.
Also added, “This is especially true for use cases such as collaboration, remote work, and new digital services to support a hybrid workforce.”
Today, the cloud supports most new technology disruptions, including composable business, and has shown its robustness, scalability, flexibility, and speed during times of uncertainty. Hybrid, multi-cloud, and edge settings are becoming more prevalent, paving the way for new distributed cloud models to emerge. New wireless communications advancements, such as 5G R16 and R17, will also propel cloud adoption to a new level of broader, deeper, and ubiquitous use. Improved mobile banking experiences and healthcare transformation will be among the use cases that emerge.
As a result, cloud usage will continue to grow fast over the world. End-user expenditure on public cloud services is expected to reach $396 billion in 2021, according to Gartner, and to expand 21.7 percent to $482 billion in 2022. (see Table 1). Furthermore, Gartner projects that by 2026, public cloud investment will account for more than 45 percent of total enterprise IT spending, up from less than 17 percent in 2021.
Table 1. Worldwide Public Cloud Services End-User Spending Forecast (Millions of US Dollars)
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
| Cloud Business Process Services (BPaaS) | 46,066 | 51,027 | 55,538 |
| Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS) | 58,917 | 80,002 | 100,636 |
| Cloud Application Services (SaaS) | 120,686 | 145,509 | 171,915 |
| Cloud Management and Security Services | 22,664 | 25,987 | 29,736 |
| Cloud System Infrastructure Services (IaaS) | 64,286 | 91,543 | 121,620 |
| Desktop as a Service (DaaS) | 1,235 | 2,079 | 2,710 |
| Total Market | 313,853 | 396,147 | 482,155 |
“Organisations are advancing their timelines on digital business initiatives and rushing to the cloud to modernize environments, improve system reliability, support hybrid work models and address other new realities compelled by the pandemic,” said Brandon Medford, senior principal analyst at Gartner.
New regional and vertical cloud ecosystems and data services are being created as a result of growing global regulatory fragmentation, protectionism, and industry compliance. Companies in the financial and governmental sectors are attempting to reduce significant lock-in and single points of failure with cloud providers outside their home nation.
Regions that are unable to develop or sustain their own platform ecosystems will be forced to rely on platforms developed in other regions, as well as legislation and regulation, to maintain control and sovereignty. Concerns among legislators, academics, and technology suppliers in these areas are growing, prompting projects like GAIA-X in European countries.
According to nearly half of respondents in the Gartner CEO Survey for 2021, climate change mitigation will have a substantial impact on their organization. As a result of this increased focus on sustainability, cloud providers are implementing more stringent carbon-neutral business goals, posing new infrastructure and operations (I&O) management challenges.
“New sustainability requirements will be mandated over the next few years, and the choice of cloud services providers may hinge on the provider’s ‘green’ initiatives,” said Cecci.
According to Gartner, the use of fully managed and AI/ML-enabled cloud services by hyper scale CIPS providers is expected to be widespread. In the public cloud, this will quickly decrease the operational load of traditional I&O jobs.
“Infrastructure is becoming programmable, and its operation is subsequently becoming automated,” said Cecci. “Modern IT infrastructure, whether deployed in the data center or consumed in the public cloud, requires less manual intervention and routine administration than its legacy equivalents.”
Gartner clients can read more in the reports “Top Four Trends Are Shaping the Future of Public Cloud” and“Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2019-2025, 2Q21 Update.”
At the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations, and Cloud Strategies Conference in London on the 22nd and 23rd of November, Gartner experts will present additional analysis on cloud strategies, infrastructure, and operations trends. Use the hashtag #GartnerIO to follow news and updates from these conferences on Twitter.
