Operating under the cloud’s ever-growing shadow, the financial services industry appears to be shedding its technologically conservative reputation.
The world’s banks, investment firms and insurance companies are loosening their grips on their mainframes and private centers, entrusting cloud providers with more of their IT requirements and application workloads, indicates a recent IDC forecast. The IT market research firm predicted that the finance industry will spend $3.2 billion on the industry cloud by the time 2017 draws to a close, a 26 percent increase compared to 2016.
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In 2018, the financial industry is poised to spend $4 billion on industry cloud solutions, a 23.8 percent year-over-year increase, predicted the analyst group. The term industry cloud describes cloud offerings that are tailored to the needs of specific vertical markets, including government, healthcare, manufacturing, and of course, finance.
Financial companies may be flocking to the cloud, but they will be outspent by the healthcare and manufacturing industries.
Manufacturers will spend $5.18 billion on industry cloud solutions in 2018, a 22.8 percent annual increase. Collectively, healthcare organizations will spend more than twice that amount, or $10.64 billion in 2018, a 20.2 percent jump.
All told, the finance, manufacturing and healthcare provider verticals will help industry cloud providers rack up sales of $19.83 billion in 2018, a 21.6 percent improvement over 2017 estimates of $16.3 billion.
Meanwhile, cloud vendors are all too eager to cater to this growing market, noted IDC program vice president Eric Newmark.
“Dozens of new industry collaborative clouds are emerging each year, helping to foster digital transformation, streamline industry value chains, and ultimately drive innovation, while most software vendors are also shifting their portfolios to focus more heavily on designing industry cloud solutions,” said Newmark in a statement. “Healthcare continues to lead the charge from a vertical standpoint, but many industries have picked up momentum, including manufacturing, financial services, and even government.”
The U.S. is the industry cloud capital of the world, attracting the majority (73 percent) of spending in 2017. Western Europe is a distant second at 12 percent. In China, IDC expects the finance, manufacturing and healthcare industries to spend $330 million in 2018, an impressive 38 percent increase compared to 2017.
Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.
