Dell, HPE Lead Public Cloud Infrastructure Spending Binge

Public cloud spending on servers, storage and networking products from the likes of Dell and HPE reaches $13.3 billion in third quarter 2020.

Businesses across the globe are gobbling up server, storage and networking products for their public cloud infrastructure at a rapid pace with Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Inspur generating the most revenue.

Vendor revenues from cloud infrastructure spending reached $18.3 billion in the third quarter of 2020, according to new data from IT research firm IDC, an increase of nearly 10 percent year over year. Spending on public cloud infrastructure hit $13.3 billion in the third quarter, up 13 percent year over year. Private cloud infrastructure spending was flat year over year at $5 billion.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has significantly shifted how businesses and organizations of all sizes buy and use online tools, from video-conferencing and virtual business events to entertainment and remote education. IDC said this change was enabled by cloud environments, particularly public clouds.

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Dell Technologies generated the most cloud infrastructure sales in the third quarter of 2020 at $2.75 billion in revenue, up 6 percent year over year. The Round Rock, Texas-based company is the worldwide leader in server, storage and hyperconverged infrastructure. Dell won 15 percent share of the global cloud infrastructure spending market, down from 15.5 percent share year over year.

HPE and its Chinese-based affiliate New H3C Group placed second by generating $1.97 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue in third quarter 2020, up 4.5 percent year over year. The Houston, Texas-based company, who recently moved its headquarters out of California, won 10.7 percent share of the cloud infrastructure spending market, down from 11.2 percent share one year ago.

China-based Inspur saw the biggest cloud infrastructure sales growth compared to any vendor in the world during the third quarter of 2020. Inspur generated $1.59 billion in cloud infrastructure sales in the quarter, up 31 percent year over year. Inspur’s cloud infrastructure market share climbed from 7.2 percent share in third quarter 2019 to now 8.7 percent share.

Cisco was the only major vendor that reported a cloud infrastructure sales decline. In third quarter 2020, Cisco generated $1.03 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue, down 6 percent year over year.

The other two world leaders in cloud infrastructure sales were Huawei at 5 percent share with $910 million in revenue, and Lenovo at 4.8 percent share with $878 million in cloud infrastructure sales.

IDC: Hardware Infrastructure ‘Has Reached A Tipping Point’

IDC said in its third quarter cloud infrastructure market report that “hardware infrastructure market has reached a tipping point and cloud environments will continue to account for an increasingly greater share of overall spending.”

The research firm has increased its forecast for cloud IT infrastructure spending for the full year 2020, expecting 11.1 percent annual growth to $74 billion. Additionally, IDC has reduced its forecast for non-cloud infrastructure, expecting an annual spending decline of 11.4 percent in 2020 to $60 billion.

Annual public cloud IT infrastructure spending is expected to grow by 17 percent year to $52.7 billion in 2020. Spending on private cloud infrastructure is expected to decline less than 1 percent in 2020 to $21.3 billion, according to IDC.

Looking ahead, IDC expects spending on cloud IT infrastructure to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.6 percent, reaching $110 billion in 2024. Public cloud data centers will account for 70 percent of the total spending.