Gartner Predicts Soaring Growth in Public Cloud Spending, Reaching $679 Billion by 2024

In a groundbreaking forecast, Gartner, Inc. anticipates a remarkable surge in worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services. The projection indicates a substantial growth of 20.4%, reaching an impressive $678.8 billion in 2024, compared to $563.6 billion in 2023.

Sid Nag, Vice President Analyst at Gartner, emphasizes the pivotal role of cloud services in today’s landscape, describing them as essentially indispensable. However, Nag notes that this indispensability doesn’t equate to a halt in cloud innovation; instead, it necessitates continuous evolution. Cloud providers are experiencing a shift, where business outcomes now shape cloud models, signifying a change from the traditional paradigm.

Nag points out that as organizations increasingly deploy generative AI (GenAI) services, they will turn to the public cloud due to the massive infrastructure scale required. However, he underscores the importance of cloud providers addressing non-technical issues related to cost, economics, sovereignty, privacy, and sustainability to effectively deploy GenAI.

All segments of the cloud market are expected to witness growth in 2024, with Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) projected to experience the highest end-user spending growth at 26.6%, followed closely by platform-as-a-service (PaaS) at 21.5%.

Worldwide Public Cloud Services End-User Spending Forecast (Millions of $)

	2022	2023	2024
Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS)	119,579	145,320	176,493
Cloud Application Services (SaaS)	174,416	205,221	243,991
Cloud Business Process Services (BPaaS)	61,557	66,339	72,923
Cloud Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)	2,430	2,784	3,161
Cloud System Infrastructure Services (IaaS)	120,333	143,927	182,222
Total Market	478,315	563,592	678,790

Additionally, a notable trend driving cloud spending is the growing prominence of industry cloud platforms. These platforms integrate various cloud services into comprehensive offerings tailored to industry-specific needs. Gartner predicts that by 2027, over 70% of enterprises will leverage industry cloud platforms to expedite their business initiatives, a substantial increase from less than 15% in 2023.

Nag underlines that the adoption of GenAI will further fuel the growth in industry cloud platforms, emphasizing the need for public cloud providers to position themselves as partners in the responsible and customized adoption of GenAI. This involves building on approaches applied to industry clouds, sovereign clouds, and distributed clouds.