“Accelerated computing optimized for domain specific workloads such as AI is forecast to exceed $200 billion by 2028, with the majority of the investments deployed by the hyperscale cloud service providers,” said Baron Fung, Senior Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “In order to drive long-term sustainable growth, the cloud service providers will seek to streamline general-purpose computing infrastructure costs by transitioning to next-generation server platforms and rack-scale architectures. We also anticipate increased vertical integration efforts by the hyperscalers to control costs and bring further optimizations for their full stack. Meanwhile, the enterprise segment faces near-term headwinds related to economic uncertainties, and will adopt a hybrid cloud model for AI and traditional IT workloads,” explained Fung.

Additional highlights from the January 2024 Data Center IT Capex 5-Year Forecast Report:

Worldwide server unit shipments are forecast to grow 8 percent by 2028.

Over twenty percent of the global server deployments in 2028 are forecast to be accelerated.

By 2028 the Top 4 US-based Cloud SPs—Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—will account for half of global data center capex.