IDC releases first ever report on performance intensive computing as a service

Wed, 5th Apr 2023

FYI, this story is more than a year old

International Data Corporation (IDC) has published its first-ever forecast for the performance intensive computing as a service (PICaaS) market.

IDC projects that the total worldwide PICaaS market will grow from $22.3 billion in 2021 to $103.1 billion in 2027 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) or 27.9% over the 2022-2027 forecast period.

The analysts recognise the performance-intensive computing as a service market as a fast-developing category of the public cloud services offerings, with end users leveraging the advantages of special cloud technology to run mathematically intensive computations.

Mathematically intensive computations are typically found in artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), Big Data and analytics (BDA), and engineering/technical use cases.

The percentage that the PICaaS market represents of the total $241.3 billion as-a-service market for 2022 is 12.5%.

The PICaaS market encompasses revenue generated by cloud service providers for compute, storage, and software offerings within their infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS) portfolio for AI, BDA, HPC, and engineering/technical workloads.

The BDA as a service market segment will remain the predominant contributor to the overall market throughout the forecast period, followed by AI as a service. The HPC-as-a-service market segment shows the highest growth rate, followed by AI, and then engineering/technical workloads.

Drivers for the market growth, according to IDC, are:

Performance-intensive computing goes mainstream and is increasingly considered mission critical
A growing number of enterprises identify themselves as digital businesses

But the market is also hampered by several inhibitors:

Complexity in managing hybrid technologies and lack of HPC talent within enterprises
Transferring of PIC workloads from the public cloud back into dedicated IT environments
Disrupted IT spending plans (due to supply chain issues, labor shortages, economic slowdown, and geopolitical tensions)

IDC recommends that suppliers:

Formulate an end-to-end bundled performance-intensive computing as a service product offering
Demonstrate a secure and compliant cloud infrastructure
Segment prospects by their level of enterprise intelligence and communicate on early vendor engagement opportunities and cost transparency
Align teams with performance-intensive computing capabilities and demonstrate abilities to work with evolving roles such as chief data officer
Be a trusted advisor of hybrid deployment models for performance-intensive computing workloads, offer multicloud support, and showcase a strong partner ecosystem

Madhumitha Sathish, Research Manager, Performance Intensive Computing as a Service, at IDC, says, "IDC is projecting significant growth in the performance-intensive computing as a service market, which measures the revenue that providers generate from offering compute instances, storage, and software for Big Data and analytics, AI, HPC, and engineering/technical workloads.

"These workloads all demand more advanced technologies, and cloud service providers are investing heavily to capture market share in a market that will grow to $103.1 billion by 2027."

The IDC report, Worldwide Performance-Intensive Computing as a Service Forecast, 2023-2027: Strong Growth for Big Data Analytics, AI, HPC, and Engineering/Technical Workloads, provides IDC's first-ever forecast for the performance-intensive computing as a service (PICaaS) market. The report includes worldwide PICaaS revenue for the 2022-2027 forecast period by segment as well as by percentage of overall as-a-service spending. The forecast includes public cloud, shared tenancy revenue only; IDC plans to size the market for PIC in dedicated cloud in the foreseeable future.