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Would you rather health data or finance data in the cloud?

Hint: health outspends finance outfits two to one, but all vertical IT is heading cloudy. Fast

Healthcare providers are the top users of public clouds, says analyst firm IDC.

The outfit’s new “Worldwide Semiannual Industry Cloud Tracker” reports that growth in cloud spend across four industry sectors – finance, healthcare, manufacturing and the public sector – is ratting along at US$22.5bn a year with expected growth of 24.3 per cent.

The tracker considers an “industry-specific, cloud-based, pre-integrated, elastic, scalable set of capabilities/resources/information” and spans IaaS, SaaS and PaaS.

Health accounts for nearly half of the spend, well ahead of the other three sectors. Here’s the tale of the tape.

Industry 2018 Total Industry Cloud Spend in US$bn 2019/2018 Growth
Finance $4.5 23.4%
Healthcare Provider $10.8 26.1%
Manufacturing $3.0 26.1%
Public Sector $4.3 19.4%
Total $22.5 24.3%

IDC reckons SAP is the leader in the financial cloud caper, while Veeva Systems tops the manufacturing sector and Lockheed Martin has just under a third - with $1.4 billion of the public sector industry cloud market.

Health looks more fragmented, as only athenaHealth has more than US$1bn in revenue.

IDC’s senior analyst for cloud, SaaS, and industry cloud Zachary Rabel said “the industry cloud market is expected to sustain its double-digit growth for the next five to ten years.”

“ Industry clouds continue to arise every year,” he said. Some come from new players, others come from existing vendors who “shift to portfolio verticalization, designing industry-tailored solutions” to keep up with demand for cloud. Such moves, Rabel said, should keep innovation humming along nicely. Which should be good for us all, eventually. Assuming all these small clouds get it right, as the prospect of health and financial data escaping is far from pleasant. ®

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