On-premise IT infrastructure still accounts for the bulk of enterprise IT spend, but cloud infrastructure is rapidly catching up, and now represents a third of all IT spending, according to a new report from International Data Corp.

The research outfit’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Infrastructure Tracker found that total cloud IT infrastructure spend, which includes servers, storage and Ethernet switches, will increase by 26.4 percent this year, reaching $33.4 billion. That accounts for 33 percent of all IT infrastructure spending, IDC said. Last year, cloud infrastructure accounted for 28.1 percent of all spend.

“The breadth and width of cloud offerings only continue to grow, with an increasing universe of business- and consumer-oriented solutions being born in the cloud and/or served better by the cloud,” Natalya Yezhkova, research director of storage systems at IDC, said in a statement. “This growing demand from the end user side and expansion of cloud-based offerings from service providers will continue to fuel growth in spending on the underlying IT infrastructure in the foreseeable future.”

Breaking the figures down a bit, IDC said that private cloud spending on infrastructure will grow by $11.7 billion, a 16.8 percent rise on last year. Meanwhile, public cloud spend will hit $21.7 billion, a 32.3 percent rise. The good news for cloud vendors is that this is no flash in the pan or regional trend. Cloud spending will grow across all regions, IDC said, and all technologies. Public cloud spending will top that of private cloud spending in most regions, IDC added.

Even better news for vendors is that IDC predicts cloud spending to grow relentlessly over the next five years, hitting $54.6 billion in 2019, accounting for 46.5 percent of all IT infrastructure spending.

Those vendors who’ve struggled to adapt to the cloud had better watch out though – in the same time frame, IDC says non-cloud spending will fall by -1.4 percent CAGR. Nevertheless, traditional on-premise gear will remain a reality for some time to come, with many enterprises likely to build their own private clouds or adopt the hybrid cloud approach.

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