According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 25.1% year over year to nearly $6.3 billion in the first quarter of 2015 (1Q15). This was the second highest growth in the five quarters in which IDC has tracked year-over-year revenue and the second largest in terms of total spending in nine quarters of tracking.

Cloud IT infrastructure spending climbed to nearly 30% of overall IT infrastructure spending in 1Q15, up from 26.4% a year ago. Revenue from infrastructure sales for private cloud grew 24.4% year over year to $2.4 billion while sales for public cloud grew 25.5% to $3.9 billion. In comparison, the non-cloud IT infrastructure segment increased by 6.1% in the first quarter, largely driven by increased sales of servers while storage sales declined and sales of Ethernet switches grew just by 1%. All three technology markets showed strong year-over-year growth in both private and public cloud segments, with servers experiencing the highest growth at 28% and 33%, respectively.

"Cloud IT infrastructure growth continues to outpace the growth of the overall IT infrastructure market, driven by the transition of workloads onto cloud-based platforms," said Kuba Stolarski, Research Manager, Server, Virtualization and Workload Research at IDC. "Both private and public cloud infrastructures have been growing at a similar pace, suggesting that customers are open to a broad array of hybrid deployment scenarios as they modernize their IT for the 3rd Platform, begin to deploy next-gen software solutions, and embrace modern management processes that enable agile, flexible, and extensible cloud platforms."

At the regional level, vendor revenues from cloud IT infrastructure sales declined only in Central and Eastern Europe, which is experiencing political and economic turmoil that impacts overall IT spending. In all other regions year-over-year growth in IT infrastructure sales for public and private cloud remained strong and even accelerated compared to growth rates in the previous quarter.