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Gartner: Cloud Will Become a Business Necessity by 2028

Global Public Cloud Services Spending to Total $679 Billion in 2024

By 2028, cloud computing will shift from being a technology disruptor to becoming a necessary component for maintaining business competitiveness, according to Gartner, Inc.

IT spending on public cloud services continues to rise unabated. In 2024, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to total $679 billion and projected to exceed $1 trillion in 2027.

"Organizations are actively investing in cloud technology due to its potential to foster innovation, create market disruptions, and enhance customer retention in order to gain a competitive edge," said Milind Govekar, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. "While many organizations have started to seize the technical advantages of cloud, only a few have unlocked its full potential in supporting business transformation. As a result, organizations are using the cloud to launch a new wave of disruption driven by artificial intelligence (AI), enabling them to unlock business value at scale."

The Role of Cloud in 2023

More than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms by 2028 to accelerate their business initiatives

Most companies currently consider the cloud as a technology platform. In 2023, organizations are using cloud computing either as a technology disruptor or capability enabler. Gartner predicts that more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms by 2028 to accelerate their business initiatives. In 2028, most organizations will be leveraging cloud as a business necessity.

Organizations that are utilizing the cloud as a technology disruptor are harnessing its transformative potential to revolutionize non-cloud, data-center oriented computing styles and technologies.

"As businesses navigate through digital transformation journeys, movement to the cloud becomes a key decision point," said Govekar.

Companies that are adopting cloud technology as a capability enabler are using its potential to enable new capabilities such as elasticity, rapid continuous integration/cloud delivery (CI/CD), serverless functions and AI-infused APIs and processes that were difficult to achieve pre-cloud. To exploit these new capabilities, organizations must carefully evaluate factors such as their investment in skills development, breaking down operational silos, and promoting collaboration among teams to seamlessly adopt automation.

Cloud as a Business Necessity in 2028

Over the next few years, cloud computing will continue to evolve from being an innovation facilitator to a business disruptor and, ultimately, a business necessity.

With cloud computing as an innovation facilitator, organizations can distribute platform business concepts widely by using its underlying platform technology to provide interconnections, scale, aggregation and analysis capabilities, which allows the use of technology as a fundamental component of a business model.

"By leveraging the ecosystem of cloud providers, organizations can introduce innovative products and services, such as fraud prevention solutions for second-hand cars from tire manufacturers, or rapid vaccine development through cloud-based machine learning by pharmaceutical companies," said Govekar.

By 2028, most organizations will fully transform into digital entities capable of sensing and responding to business and market conditions. "With cloud computing becoming an integral part of business operations in 2028, CIOs and IT leaders will have to implement a highly efficient cloud operating model in order to achieve their desired business objectives," Govekar concluded.

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Gartner: Cloud Will Become a Business Necessity by 2028

Global Public Cloud Services Spending to Total $679 Billion in 2024

By 2028, cloud computing will shift from being a technology disruptor to becoming a necessary component for maintaining business competitiveness, according to Gartner, Inc.

IT spending on public cloud services continues to rise unabated. In 2024, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to total $679 billion and projected to exceed $1 trillion in 2027.

"Organizations are actively investing in cloud technology due to its potential to foster innovation, create market disruptions, and enhance customer retention in order to gain a competitive edge," said Milind Govekar, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. "While many organizations have started to seize the technical advantages of cloud, only a few have unlocked its full potential in supporting business transformation. As a result, organizations are using the cloud to launch a new wave of disruption driven by artificial intelligence (AI), enabling them to unlock business value at scale."

The Role of Cloud in 2023

More than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms by 2028 to accelerate their business initiatives

Most companies currently consider the cloud as a technology platform. In 2023, organizations are using cloud computing either as a technology disruptor or capability enabler. Gartner predicts that more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms by 2028 to accelerate their business initiatives. In 2028, most organizations will be leveraging cloud as a business necessity.

Organizations that are utilizing the cloud as a technology disruptor are harnessing its transformative potential to revolutionize non-cloud, data-center oriented computing styles and technologies.

"As businesses navigate through digital transformation journeys, movement to the cloud becomes a key decision point," said Govekar.

Companies that are adopting cloud technology as a capability enabler are using its potential to enable new capabilities such as elasticity, rapid continuous integration/cloud delivery (CI/CD), serverless functions and AI-infused APIs and processes that were difficult to achieve pre-cloud. To exploit these new capabilities, organizations must carefully evaluate factors such as their investment in skills development, breaking down operational silos, and promoting collaboration among teams to seamlessly adopt automation.

Cloud as a Business Necessity in 2028

Over the next few years, cloud computing will continue to evolve from being an innovation facilitator to a business disruptor and, ultimately, a business necessity.

With cloud computing as an innovation facilitator, organizations can distribute platform business concepts widely by using its underlying platform technology to provide interconnections, scale, aggregation and analysis capabilities, which allows the use of technology as a fundamental component of a business model.

"By leveraging the ecosystem of cloud providers, organizations can introduce innovative products and services, such as fraud prevention solutions for second-hand cars from tire manufacturers, or rapid vaccine development through cloud-based machine learning by pharmaceutical companies," said Govekar.

By 2028, most organizations will fully transform into digital entities capable of sensing and responding to business and market conditions. "With cloud computing becoming an integral part of business operations in 2028, CIOs and IT leaders will have to implement a highly efficient cloud operating model in order to achieve their desired business objectives," Govekar concluded.

Hot Topics

The Latest

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...