Despite colossal demand for public cloud services, the enterprise data centre shows no signs of giving up to its would-be heir, according to new research
Research released yesterday by Synergy Research shows that spending on all key areas of enterprise IT infrastructure – including servers, switches & routers and network security – increased by almost 13 percent last year, taking aggregate revenues for the last four quarters to $125 billion (£98 billion).
A key driver of enterprise infrastructure growth is spending on data centre servers, which increased by 26 percent compared to 2017 and totalled almost $40 billion (£31 billion). Synergy says the healthy growth is down to more highly featured configs and application service providers.
It is important not to overstate this growth for two reasons. Firstly, growth of the cloud market exceeded that of the enterprise data centre by eight percent, putting the latter’s spurt into perspective.
And it is important to also bear in mind that Synergy’s research encompasses sales to public cloud providers, that are having to construct data centres at a rapid rate to meet demand. It is hard to tell what percentage of infrastructure buyers are public cloud providers, but given the colossal growth of cloud they are likely responsible for a sizable chunk.
The research actually reflects the consolidation of hybrid – as firms continue to better understand which applications are preferable to keep on-prem, and those that are better off sitting in the cloud.
