IDC Forecasts Worldwide Sovereign Cloud Spending to Reach More Than $250 Billion in 2027

Global spending on sovereign cloud solutions is projected to reach $258.5 billion by 2027, according to new research from International Data Corporation (IDC).

In what is believed to be the first study of its kind, the recently published Worldwide Sovereign Cloud Market Forecast, 2022–2027 unveils that total spending on sovereign cloud is expected to record a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.6% throughout the forecast period.

While compliance with industry regulations has traditionally been the primary driver for the demand for sovereign solutions, IDC's study highlights that digital sovereignty is now a significant concern across all industries, not just those in regulated sectors. Expanding cloud use and the need to enhance cybersecurity are now seen as the main drivers for these industry users.

IDC considers data sovereignty and sovereign cloud to be subsets of digital sovereignty, which is described as the capacity for digital self-determination by nations, organizations, and individuals. "In essence, this means giving data owners total control over how and where their data is managed, stored, and processed by service providers," says Rahiel Nasir, IDC's lead analyst for Worldwide Digital Sovereignty and associate research director for European Cloud. "This includes all underlying infrastructure used for the data, such as datacenters and networks, as well as the support and admin staff that have access to that data and infrastructure."

IDC's sovereign cloud spending forecast is based on a proportion of total global public cloud spending on three primary segments:

• Data sovereignty —includes solutions that provide a holistic view of how data is collected, classified, processed, stored and protected.

• Technical sovereignty —refers to all the digital infrastructure located in a sovereign environment.

• Operational sovereignty —should include solutions that enable transparency in controlling cloud operations, from provisioning and performance management, to the monitoring of physical and digital access to the infrastructure.

Each of these segments is made up of further functional markets that are described in greater detail in IDC's inaugural Worldwide Digital Sovereignty Taxonomy, 2023: Cloud Sovereignty study published earlier in 2023.

IDC estimates that the combined spending on data, operational, and technical sovereignty totaled $79.4 billion in 2022 and is projected to surpass $103 billion by the end of 2023.

"Much of the spending we expect to see in this market over the forecast period will be on data sovereignty solutions. That comes as no surprise, as we believe this is where the journey toward sovereign cloud starts,” says Nasir. "However, as cloud usage increasingly broadens, organizations will seek more wide-ranging offerings for sovereignty, encompassing both technical and operational aspects. Consequently, we also foresee relatively steady growth in these domains over the coming years.”