Cloud computing is predicted to witness explosive growth in next couple of years. International Data Corporation (IDC) reveals the worldwide spending on public cloud services may hit $805 billion in 2024 and the figure may be double of it by 2028. This forecast signifies a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.4% over the period of next five years.

Eileen Smith, group vice president of Data & Analytics at IDC, said that the cloud is now dominating the tech spending across infrastructure, platforms and applications. The trend is basically driven by organizations which are adopting public cloud platforms to save on the costs.

The IDC report covers 28 industries such as banking, software and retail. The three are collectively spending $190 billion on public cloud services. Telecommunications, media, capital markets and healthcare sectors are also contributing significantly in 2024.

Capital markets, life sciences and insurance industries are being expected to witness fastest growth in cloud spending. Almost every industry is predicted to maintain double-digit growth rates. This highlights the broad appeal and necessity of cloud services across various sectors.

The surge in cloud spending is being driven by advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). IDC research manager Andrea Minonne states that the rapid advancements in AI are driving the surge in cloud spending. Organizations are currently building, testing and deploying AI platforms.

Software as a Service (SaaS) – Applications are projected to lead and may capture more than 40% of all public cloud spending in 2024. Some of the key SaaS applications to name here are enterprise resource management (ERM), customer relationship management (CRM), content workflow and collaborative applications. However, it is also being said that the growth rate for SaaS – Applications will be slightly slower than the overall market