Johannesburg, 20 Nov 2017
Digital transformation - the process of creating value, growth and competitive advantage through new digital offerings, business models, and business relationships - has become a critical imperative for enterprises worldwide. In the process, digital transformation is fundamentally changing how business gets done.
Cloud computing has emerged as an essential means by which enterprises realise digital transformation. In fact, public cloud services are perceived as enablers of business agility, and the public cloud services market has rapidly expanded to form an essential foundation for digital business. IDC has estimated that public cloud IT services revenue will exceed $204.5 billion in 2020, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.5% from 2016 to 2020 - almost seven times the overall rate of IT growth (see figure 1). In 2020, public IT cloud services will account for 58% of the overall $355 billion spent on applications, development and deployment tools, infrastructure software, storage and servers.
Moreover, about 62.7% of more than 6 000 enterprise IT organisations that participated in the 2016 edition of IDC's comprehensive CloudView Survey indicated they were already using or were planning to use public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) by the end of 2016. This finding aligns with IDC's view that a growing proportion of enterprises have shifted to a "cloud first" strategy over the past several years. In the ensuing years, as an even greater percentage of IT spending shifts to the cloud, many organisations will steadily move towards a "cloud only" posture. IDC believes as that process plays out, 60% of enterprise IT will be off-premises by the end of 2018, driven in large part by enterprise adoption of public cloud services.
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