Global spending on cloud infrastructure services increased by 34% to a total of nearly $56 billion in the first quarter of 2022, driven by the need for resiliency and flexibility as businesses face supply chain problems and geopolitical upheaval, according to a report released Friday by analyst firm Canalys.
Migrating workloads to the cloud, investing in data storage, and cloud-native application development have all been particular drivers of SMB (small and medium business) investment in the cloud, as they step up digital transformation projects, the report said. But large enterprises have also been ramping up their spending on cloud services — given infrastructure hardware shortages, and the potential for future price increases among cloud providers, big businesses have opted for hefty, long-term contracts in order to lock in pricing discounts with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
