According to IDC (www.idc.com), vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew 25.5% year over year in the third quarter of 2017 (3Q17), reaching $11.3 billion.

Public cloud infrastructure revenue grew 32.3% year over year in 3Q17 to $7.7 billion and now represents 30.2% of total worldwide IT infrastructure spending, up from 26.3% one year ago, notes the research group. Private cloud revenue reached $3.6 billion for an annual increase of 13.1%. Total worldwide cloud IT infrastructure revenue is on pace to nearly double in 2017 when compared to 2013.

Traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure revenue grew 8% from a year ago, although it has been generally declining over the past several years; despite the declining trend, at $14.2 billion in 3Q17 traditional IT still represents 55.6% of total worldwide IT infrastructure spending.

Public cloud also represented 68.0% of the total cloud IT infrastructure revenue in 3Q17. The market with the highest growth in the public cloud infrastructure segment was Storage Platforms with revenue up 45.1% compared to the same quarter of the previous year, and making up 42.0% of the revenue in public cloud.

Compute Platforms and Ethernet Switch public cloud IT infrastructure revenues were up 24.8% and 23.2%, respectively. Compute Platforms represented 43.9% of public cloud IT infrastructure revenue. Private cloud infrastructure revenue was driven by the Storage Platforms growth of 16.1% year over year.

"2017 has been a strong year for public cloud IT infrastructure growth, accelerating throughout the year," said Kuba Stolarski, research director for Computing P latforms at IDC. "While hyperscalers such as Amazon and Google are driving the lion's share of the growth, IDC is seeing strong growth in the lower tiers of public cloud and continued growth in private cloud on a worldwide scale. In the near term, new Intel and AMD platforms released during 2017 should aid in refresh and infrastructure expansion throughout the cloud IT infrastructure segment.”

Except for Latin America revenue, which grew 5.0% from a year ago, all other regions in the world grew their cloud IT Infrastructure revenue by double digits. Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) saw the fastest growth rates at 50.1% and 35.3%, respectively. Canada (22.5%) and Western Europe (24.6%) had annual growth in the twenties, while the U.S. (18.7%), Japan (17.5%), and Middle East & Africa (MEA) (15.8%) had annual growth in the teens.