Gartner: Worldwide Public Cloud End-User Spending to Approach $600 Billion in 2023

Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 20.7% to total $591.8 billion in 2023, up from $490.3 billion in 2022, according to Gartner. This is higher than the 18.8% growth forecast for 2022.

“Current inflationary pressures and macroeconomic conditions are having a push and pull effect on cloud spending,” said Sid Nag, Vice President Analyst at Gartner. “Cloud computing will continue to be a bastion of safety and innovation, supporting growth during uncertain times due to its agile, elastic, and scalable nature.

“Yet, organizations can only spend what they have. Cloud spending could decrease if overall IT budgets shrink, given that cloud continues to be the largest chunk of IT spend and proportionate budget growth.”

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is forecast to experience the highest end-user spending growth in 2023 at 29.8%, by all segments are expected see growth in 2023.

Gartner expects that platform-as-a service (PaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) will see the most significant impacts from inflation due to staffing challenges and the focus on margin protection. However, both segments will still see continued growth, with Gartner forecasting 23.2% growth for PaaS and 16.8% for SaaS in 2023.

“Higher-wage and more skilled staff are required to develop modern SaaS applications, so organizations will be challenged as hiring is reduced to control costs,” said Nag. “But since PaaS can facilitate more efficient and automated code generation for SaaS applications, the rate of PaaS consumption will consequently increase.”

Gartner clients can learn more in “Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2020-2026, 3Q22 Update.”

Channel Impact^®
The report demonstrates that cloud uptake will continue to rise despite inflationary pressures and trends toward reduced spending.