IDC: Manufacturing, retail/wholesale biggest cloud spenders
According to the latest release of the Worldwide Semiannual Industry Cloud Tracker from IDC, five large industry groups are expected to spend a total of $37.5 billion on industry cloud solutions in 2018.
The five industry groups are healthcare, public sector, finance, retail/wholesale, and manufacturing.
Among them, manufacturing grew the strongest while retail/wholesale was next.
IDC's spending forecast for the five industry groups shows a small increase in 2019 growth, relative to 2018.
The overall market is expected to reach $45.4 billion in 2019 with three of the five groups growing above the market average of 21.5%.
Healthcare provider and public sector spending are both forecast to grow below the market average, although their 2019 growth rates will be higher than those for 2018.
"IDC's latest forecast shows that industry cloud growth rates will continue to accelerate over the next three years, which is very unusual for multi-billion-dollar markets," says IDC senior vice president and chief analyst Frank Gens.
"This growth is being driven by rapidly-digitising industries like healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing, where industry clouds are becoming the cornerstones for next-generation growth and innovation strategies.
According to IDC's vendor estimates for 1H 2018, SAP is still the leading vendor in the finance industry cloud market.
After SAP, the next seven vendors in the finance industry cloud market are also expected to capture more than $100 million in revenues over the same period.
On the healthcare provider side, IDC currently tracks over 140 industry cloud players with athenaHealth and NTT DATA consistently occupying the top two spots.
In the manufacturing industry cloud market, Veeva Systems and Medidata constantly vie for the first two positions while Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman compete at the top of the public sector market.
In the retail/wholesale industry cloud market, NCR holds the top spot followed by Shopify.
"The industry cloud market continues to accelerate as cloud users demand both vertically-specific capabilities in their solutions and industry expertise from their cloud service providers," adds IDC cloud, SaaS, and industry cloud research senior research analyst Zachary Rabel.
"To capture this growth, cloud vendors have increasingly shifted their horizontal capabilities to form industry cloud solutions, while industry clouds themselves have created consortiums of collaboration to drive industry innovation. Healthcare has led industries towards this trend, but the finance, manufacturing, and retail industries have internalised the successes and failures from horizontal platforms to form their own paths.
"IDC believes the industry cloud market is among the largest vertical growth opportunities for both technology vendors and professional services firms through 2025."
