In the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, end-user spending on public cloud services is expected to see significant growth, reaching $7.3 billion in 2024, up from $6.1 billion in 2023. This growth is driven by companies in the region moving towards digitalization, as well as the common goal of becoming technology and data-centric economies. Organizations are using the cloud to leverage technologies like AI and business analytics, enhancing their capabilities. Gartner’s Senior Principal Analyst, Shailendra Upadhyay, predicts that this trend will continue, with public cloud spending expected to reach $9.09 billion in 2025.
Globally, end-user spending on public cloud services is also on the rise, with a forecasted growth of 20.4 per cent to $675.4 billion in 2024, up from $561 billion in 2023. This growth is being fueled by generative AI (GenAI) and application modernization. Gartner’s Vice President Analyst, Sid Nag, attributes the continued growth in public cloud spending to the development of general-purpose foundation models and the delivery of GenAI-enabled applications at scale. Nag predicts that public cloud end-user spending will surpass $1 trillion before the end of the decade.
In 2024, all segments of the cloud market are expected to see growth, with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) leading the way with a projected growth rate of 25.6 per cent, followed by Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) at 20.6 per cent. Nag points out that the growth in IaaS is closely tied to the GenAI revolution, as the need for infrastructure to support AI model training, inferencing, and fine-tuning continues to grow exponentially.
While cloud infrastructure and platform services are driving the highest spending growth, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) remains the largest segment of the cloud market in end-user spending. SaaS spending is expected to grow by 20 per cent, totaling $247.2 billion in 2024. Nag attributes this growth to applications being modernized by independent software vendors to run in a SaaS-based consumption model. Organizations are increasingly utilizing cloud services for specific use cases such as AI, machine learning, IoT, and big data, fueling the growth of SaaS.
Overall, the cloud market is expected to continue to expand rapidly, with public cloud spending projected to increase across all segments. The Middle East and North Africa region, in particular, is seeing a surge in public cloud adoption as companies embrace digital transformation. With the growth of GenAI and application modernization driving this trend, organizations are leveraging cloud technologies to enhance their capabilities and fuel their growth. As the cloud market matures, end-user spending is projected to surpass significant milestones in the coming years, heralding a new era of digital transformation.
