Gartner forecasts public cloud spending will grow 20.7% to $591.8B in 2023, including SaaS spending up 16.8% to $195.2B and PaaS spending up 23.2% to $136.4B
Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE :
Context & Ripple Effects
This forecast extends Gartner's own arc: in April it projected 2022 corporate cloud spending of $494.7B growing 20% (Gartner's 2022 cloud forecast), and by August it was warning that overall tech spending would slow to ~3% (Gartner's ~3% tech spending projection) as macro pressure hit IT budgets. The new 20.7% cloud number is the counterpoint — cloud keeps absorbing a growing slice of a barely-growing budget.
First-order effects
- SaaS vendors face the slowest growth in the forecast at 16.8% to $195.2B, while PaaS is positioned as the fastest-growing layer at 23.2% to $136.4B — shifting where vendors and buyers direct new commitments in 2023.
Second-order effects
- Hyperscalers — AWS, Microsoft, and Google, who held a combined 65% of enterprise cloud spend in Q1 2023 per Synergy — have the strongest incentive to push PaaS attach, since platform services grow fastest and lock workloads to their infrastructure.
Third-order effects
- With cloud compounding near 20% while total tech spending grows ~3% — and 2022 actuals reaching $545.8B ($545.8B in 2022 cloud revenue) — cloud's share of enterprise IT budgets rises structurally each year, and the mix tilts from applications toward platforms.
The trend: Cloud spending is decoupling from flat overall IT budgets, with the fastest growth migrating from SaaS applications down into PaaS platform services controlled by hyperscalers.