Combined spending on public cloud infrastructure and software services in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is expected to grow 27% year on year in 2021, rising to a value of more than $5-billion, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

IDC’s new Worldwide Public Cloud Services Spending Guide reports that, the manufacturing industry, after a challenging 2020 due to the Covid-19 crisis, will account for the largest share of public cloud services spending in CEE this year.

Manufacturing will be the largest spender in 2021, but other industries in CEE are moving even more rapidly from on-premises solutions to cloud-based platforms. Industries making the quickest shifts include personal and consumer services, professional services, retail and wholesale, and telecom and media.

“As a result of globalization, today’s marketplace is extremely competitive,” says Soheyla Mirshahi, senior research analyst at IDC Customer Insights & Analysis, Europe. “CEE businesses are aware they must migrate from on-premises solutions to public cloud to provide customers with more agile, flexible, and customisable services.”

IDC reports that CEE organisations are increasingly adopting cloud-based platform as a service (PaaS) to accelerate application development and deployment. This presents opportunity for services providers, particularly in the finance sector. Many financial services companies regard PaaS as a key tool to bring innovative, customer-centric services to market faster and at a lower cost.