The latest IDC report finds that cloud deployments accounted for almost a third of collective global server, disk storage, and ethernet switch infrastructure spending during the third quarter of 2014.
IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker for 3Q14 noted that the overall cloud infrastructure revenue rose 16% during the quarter to $6.5bn.
IDC Datacenter and Cloud research vice president Richard Villars said: "Public and private clouds represent the ‘compute factories’ and ‘digital content depots’ of the 3rd Platform era."
"Whether internally owned or ‘rented’ from a service provider, cloud environments are strategic assets that organizations of all types must rely upon to quickly introduce new services of unprecedented scale, speed, and scope.
"Their effective use will garner first-mover advantage to any organization in a hyper-competitive market."
The public cloud infrastructure accounted for about half of the overall cloud infrastructure revenue and is on pace by growing at 18% compared to one year ago.
IDC Worldwide Tracker Research programme vice president Lidice Fernandez said: "This new Tracker will greatly help our clients to better navigate and perform competitive analysis for the cloud environment.
"This is the best way IDC can help vendors target their go-to-market efforts for the 3rd Platform marketplace era."
