Structured database/data management workloads continued to drive the majority of enterprise IT infrastructure spending in the second half of 2023, according to IDC: Workloads. Despite the high level of spending, structured databases/data management was one of the few workloads where spending decreased in the second half of the year, falling 1.3% compared to the same period in 2022. The workload with the fastest growing spend in 2H23 was Industry Specific Business Applications, with a year-over-year increase of 36.6%. Spending on AI lifecycle workloads accelerated during the second half of 2023, growing 26.6% compared to 2H22 and representing 7.2% of total spending. This made the AI lifecycle the second largest workload with a total spend of $6.6 billion. Client Computing experienced a strong recovery after two weak semesters, with growth of 22.6% compared to 2H22. Development Tools and Applications, Text and Media Analytics, Business Intelligence/Data Analytics, and Engineering/Technical Workloads workloads also saw double-digit growth in 2H23 with 17.8% year-over-year spending growth, 16.6%, 15.3% and 11.4% respectively.
Workload spending profiles vary across product categories. For ODM Direct, the largest spend came from Consumer-Facing Digital Services workloads at $2.8 billion in 2H23, representing 10.6% of ODM spend. For OEM Servers, AI Lifecycle was the leading workload with $3.9 billion and a 7.6% share. OEM Storage was led by Structured Databases/Data Management workloads, which accounted for 16.6% of spend, valued at $2.4 billion.
Likewise, workload priorities vary across geographic regions. In the Americas, spending on AI lifecycle workloads reached the highest position in 2H23 at $3.1 billion, while in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China), China and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Structured Databases/Data Management workloads saw the highest spend in 2H23 at $1.1 billion, $2.3 billion and $0.99 billion respectively. As enterprise workloads continue to move toward cloud environments, investments in shared infrastructure (a hardware foundation for delivering public cloud services) and dedicated infrastructure across workloads are expected to grow at a double-digit pace over the next five years.
Spending on workloads in cloud and shared infrastructure environments is projected to have a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.8%, with Digital Services and AI Lifecycle leading the way . IDC predicts that Digital Services and AI Lifecycle spending in cloud and shared environments will reach $16.5 billion and $11.6 billion by 2028 respectively, both with a five-year CAGR of 15%.
Infrastructure spending in cloud and dedicated environments will see a CAGR of 12.9% with Structured Databases/Data Management followed by AI Lifecycle as the fastest growing workloads and five-year CAGRs of 8.8 % and 18.8% respectively. AI Lifecycle will remain the second largest category in terms of spending, reaching $4.9 billion by 2028.
Over the next five years, IDC expects spending growth on compute and storage systems for cloud-native workloads to be much faster than the infrastructure supporting traditional workloads (14.0% vs. 8.4% CAGR), although traditional workloads will continue to account for the majority of spending over the forecast period (67% in 2028).
Spending on workloads in non-cloud infrastructure environments will grow at a CAGR of 4.1% over the next five years, with Unstructured Databases, Text and Media Analytics, and the AI Lifecycle leading the way. fastest growing workloads with five-year CAGRs of 12.8%, 11.8% and 9.0% respectively. However, Structured Databases/Data Management, Content Applications and Business Intelligence/Data Analytics will account for 24% of spending by 2028, while Unstructured Databases, Text and Media Analytics, and the Data Cycle AI Life combined will only represent 15% of spending in the same year.
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