According to IDC, nearly $55 billion was spent on computing and storage capacity in data centers in the first quarter.

IDC has released its latest Worldwide quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker done. These are the figures for the first quarter of 2024. During this period, companies worldwide spent 54.4 billion on computing power and storage. An increase of 46 percent compared to the previous year.

Computing and storage are very popular these days. In the AI ​​era, businesses need a little more of everything, which leads to high costs and energy consumption in data centers. It’s quite difficult to deduce directly from the IDC report to what extent the AI ​​hype is driving the increase in data center spending, but it seems like a plausible explanation why it’s increasing by almost fifty percent in a year.

Cloud or not?

IDC distinguishes between cloud and non-cloud infrastructure. Many companies today are faced with the question of whether to move to the cloud or stay on-premises. The figures show that cloud spending continues to rise sharply, by 37 percent to $33 billion.

IDC also distinguishes between shared and dedicated infrastructure within the cloud. Most of the money is spent on shared infrastructure: $26.3 billion to be exact, 44 percent more than a year ago. Companies spent $7.4 billion on hosted cloud systems, an increase of 15 percent. Non-cloud infrastructure is growing steadily by five percent.

IDC expects companies to continue to open their pockets to expand their computing and storage capacities. The (shared) cloud will continue to dominate with spending of up to $138 billion, while non-cloud infrastructure will amount to around $65 billion.