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Gartner Says "Cloud Shift" Will Affect More Than $1 Trillion in IT Spending

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

More than $1 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the shift to cloud during the next five years, according to Gartner, Inc. This will make cloud computing one of the most disruptive forces of IT spending since the early days of the digital age.

"Cloud-first strategies are the foundation for staying relevant in a fast-paced world," said Ed Anderson, Research VP at Gartner. "The market for cloud services has grown to such an extent that it is now a notable percentage of total IT spending, helping to create a new generation of start-ups and "born in the cloud" providers."

IT spending is steadily shifting from traditional IT offerings to cloud services (cloud shift). The aggregate amount of cloud shift in 2016 is estimated to reach $111 billion, increasing to $216 billion in 2020. Cloud shift rates are determined by comparing IT spending on cloud services with traditional noncloud services in the same market categories.

In addition to the direct effects of cloud shift, many markets will be affected indirectly. Identifying indirect effects can help IT asset and purchasing managers ensure they are getting the best value out of new expenditure and are protected against risk, as well as assisting them to exploit the new opportunities caused by cloud shift.

For example, instead of buying operating systems (OSs) for each user in the traditional way, many will be provided as OS images — particularly with the use of containers for next-generation applications. Another example is that enterprise storage needs could be met with a lower up front cost and far more scalability by switching to cloud solutions instead of buying dedicated hardware.

"Cloud shift is not just about cloud. As organizations pursue a new IT architecture and operating philosophy, they become prepared for new opportunities in digital business, including next-generation IT solutions such as the Internet of Things," said Anderson. "Furthermore, organizations embracing dynamic, cloud-based operating models position themselves better for cost optimization and increased competitiveness."

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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Gartner Says "Cloud Shift" Will Affect More Than $1 Trillion in IT Spending

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

More than $1 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the shift to cloud during the next five years, according to Gartner, Inc. This will make cloud computing one of the most disruptive forces of IT spending since the early days of the digital age.

"Cloud-first strategies are the foundation for staying relevant in a fast-paced world," said Ed Anderson, Research VP at Gartner. "The market for cloud services has grown to such an extent that it is now a notable percentage of total IT spending, helping to create a new generation of start-ups and "born in the cloud" providers."

IT spending is steadily shifting from traditional IT offerings to cloud services (cloud shift). The aggregate amount of cloud shift in 2016 is estimated to reach $111 billion, increasing to $216 billion in 2020. Cloud shift rates are determined by comparing IT spending on cloud services with traditional noncloud services in the same market categories.

In addition to the direct effects of cloud shift, many markets will be affected indirectly. Identifying indirect effects can help IT asset and purchasing managers ensure they are getting the best value out of new expenditure and are protected against risk, as well as assisting them to exploit the new opportunities caused by cloud shift.

For example, instead of buying operating systems (OSs) for each user in the traditional way, many will be provided as OS images — particularly with the use of containers for next-generation applications. Another example is that enterprise storage needs could be met with a lower up front cost and far more scalability by switching to cloud solutions instead of buying dedicated hardware.

"Cloud shift is not just about cloud. As organizations pursue a new IT architecture and operating philosophy, they become prepared for new opportunities in digital business, including next-generation IT solutions such as the Internet of Things," said Anderson. "Furthermore, organizations embracing dynamic, cloud-based operating models position themselves better for cost optimization and increased competitiveness."

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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The Latest

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...