Cloud Storage Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends & Forecasts (2025 - 2030)

Global Cloud Storage Market Trends and Insights

Gen-AI-led data explosion in knowledge-worker apps (2025+)

Generative-AI workloads are multiplying enterprise data volumes by an order of magnitude. Solid-state drive demand for AI training environments is climbing 35% per year as spinning disks struggle to meet latency targets. Storage footprints for single training runs are set to scale from 30 TB in 2025 to 100 TB by 2030, while inference nodes grow even faster as new products embed AI features. Cost models now reveal that data-handling charges eclipse model-development expenses, pushing vendors to optimize tiering and compression. Hyperscalers are redesigning storage layers to favor high-throughput NVM-based clusters and object storage buckets tuned for parallel access.

Edge-to-cloud workflow acceleration in media and gaming

Media and gaming studios are embracing cloud-first pipelines; 97% plan to raise storage budgets in 2025 as streaming and real-time rendering expand. Cloud gaming’s 44% CAGR requires distributed caches that maintain <50 ms latency across regions. Yet, these firms spend 51% of storage budgets on API calls and egress traffic, catalyzing multi-cloud placement to avoid fees.^{[2]Wasabi Technologies, “2025 Cloud Storage Index,” wasabi.com} Edge-compute spend is forecast at USD 232 billion in 2024, pushing providers to integrate on-premise gateways with hyperscale archives for seamless asset flows.

Government stimulus for sovereign cloud frameworks

Nations are financing domestic clouds to secure control over critical data. Saudi Arabia’s Global AI Hub Law enables “data embassies” that let foreign workloads run under home-country jurisdiction, while Japan targets full rollout of “Sakura Cloud” for federal workloads by fiscal 2025. Across Asia Pacific, 19% of enterprises are boosting sovereign-cloud spend, and 64% of Australian firms are exploring localized architectures. These initiatives build parallel ecosystems prioritizing residency, latency, and legal autonomy over pure cost.

ESG-driven storage optimization and carbon-aware workloads

Enterprises now weigh carbon intensity alongside throughput. Data centers account for 2.5% of global CO₂ output and consume 3–7 kWh per GB stored. Cloud providers pledge net-zero targets—Microsoft seeks carbon negativity by 2030—but emissions disclosures show continuing rises, spurring demand for energy-efficient storage tiers. Seagate’s HAMR-based Mozaic 3+ triples capacity per platter while cutting watt/TB ratios, illustrating hardware innovation aligned with ESG imperatives.^{[3]Seagate Technology, “Mozaic 3+ Platform Announcement,” seagate.com}

Persistent data-sovereignty complexity

Divergent regulations—from the U.S. CLOUD Act to China’s cross-border flow rules—force organizations to operate fragmented storage footprints and duplicate datasets to meet local statutes. Legal uncertainty raises compliance spend and slows global rollouts as firms navigate overlapping jurisdictional claims.^{[4]ISACA, “Cross-Border Data Compliance Challenges,” isaca.org}

Escalating egress-fee backlash and vendor lock-in risk

Enterprises find that migration gains erode when data-movement fees inflate total cost of ownership. Media brands already allocate more than half their cloud budgets to egress and API charges. New providers tout “egress-free” models, but switching risks and integration complexity temper adoption. Meanwhile, supply-chain constraints limit hyperscaler capacity additions, reducing customer leverage in price negotiations.

Segment Analysis

By Deployment Mode: Hybrid cloud gains enterprise momentum

The segment’s revenue in 2024 reflected a 59.0% public-cloud lead, yet hybrid architectures are on track for a 26.01% CAGR to 2030 as data residency laws tighten. Enterprises blend on-premise nodes with public scalability to meet latency and compliance goals. Governments’ sovereign frameworks further propel hybrid demand, while edge investments embed micro-regions into unified pools. Hybrid environments now manage 82% of enterprise workloads, validating the shift away from all-public strategies.

A second growth vector lies in AI training clusters that require local GPU adjacency for throughput yet still need cloud bursts for spikes. Organizations adopt control-plane software to orchestrate policies across sites, mitigating lock-in and optimizing cost. Vendors differentiate via integrated observability, automated data-tiering, and marketplace ecosystems. As budgets reallocate, the cloud storage market will see deployment models converge into fluid, policy-driven fabrics spanning core, edge, and sovereign zones.

Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

By Storage Type: Object storage dominates AI workloads

Object repositories generated 51.2% revenue in 2024 and will compound at 25.0% through 2030 as unstructured data explodes. The cloud storage market size for object platforms benefits from intrinsic scalability, rich metadata, and erasure-coding economics that align with generative-AI corpus needs. File and block tiers persist for legacy and OLTP workloads but cede share to object layers hardened for petabyte-scale parallel access.

Innovation centers on multi-tenant namespace isolation, in-line encryption, and GPU-direct pipelines that feed training nodes without staging. Micron’s roll-out of 32 TB NVMe SSDs underscores the migration toward flash-based object clusters. Patent filings reveal advances in erasure-coded caching and distributed-hash indexing, amplifying performance and durability. As AI adoption broadens, object storage will underpin content, model checkpoints, and vector databases within the cloud storage market.

By Enterprise Size: SMEs accelerate cloud-native adoption

Large enterprises retained 63.4% revenue in 2024, leveraging deep IT budgets for transformation, but SMEs now post the fastest 24.11% CAGR as serverless platforms remove capital barriers. SaaS uptake among small firms exceeds 78%, anchored by document sharing, CRM, and payroll systems that embed storage seamlessly. Providers woo SMEs with bundled security, fixed-rate tiers, and in-console AI assistants that simplify governance.

The proliferation of low-code development and marketplace integrations further lowers adoption friction. SMEs report 30% faster application deployment on serverless-backed storage compared with traditional VPS setups. As regional data centers spread, last-mile latency falls, expanding viable workloads. This democratization fuels broader cloud storage market penetration and lifts overall resilience of supply chains relying on small-vendor ecosystems.

By Application: Collaboration services drive workflow modernization

Backup and recovery preserved a 38.7% share in 2024, yet collaboration and content services will climb 24.15% CAGR as hybrid work entrenches. Enterprises require frictionless co-authoring, media editing, and AI-enabled knowledge search; storage back-ends must scale while preserving security posture. Virus-immutable snapshots and ransomware detection reshape backup products, while retrieval-augmented-generation (RAG) features blend content stores with LLMs for contextual insights.

Consolidation continues: Cohesity merged with Veritas to create the largest data-protection software supplier, echoing the tight coupling of storage and cyber-resilience. Application vendors embed zero-trust architecture and continuous auditing into offerings to satisfy regulators. Low-latency, regionally distributed caches enable real-time collaboration on high-resolution assets, boosting productivity across dispersed teams and enhancing the cloud storage market value proposition.

By End-user Industry: Media and entertainment leads digital transformation

BFSI contributed 24.1% revenue in 2024, but media and entertainment is projected to post a 25.3% CAGR to 2030 as streaming and cloud gaming surge. Studios migrate archives to cloud tiers to unlock AI-driven metadata extraction and facilitate global distribution. Egress-heavy pipelines prompt mixed-cloud strategies, balancing cost and performance. Healthcare leverages secure, HIPAA-aligned object storage for telemedicine imaging and research datasets, while manufacturing taps edge repositories for Industry 4.0 telemetry.

Government bodies modernize citizen services, adopting sovereign clouds to maintain jurisdictional control. Collectively, vertical-specific compliance, latency, and analytics demands shape tailored offerings, deepening market segmentation, and reinforcing the diverse growth vectors of the cloud storage market.

Geography Analysis

North America held 38.0% revenue in 2024 as hyperscaler headquarters and early AI adoption drove demand. Data-center power needs are on a 16% annual trajectory to 2028, though transmission bottlenecks and permitting delays pressure timelines. Regulatory proposals such as cloud know-your-customer (KYC) checks may fragment cross-border workflows, nudging enterprises toward multi-region architectures. Hardware shortages intermittently constrain capacity, but continuous investment sustains leadership in innovation and spend.

Asia Pacific is the growth engine, charting a 24.98% CAGR courtesy of government digitization programs, sovereign-cloud mandates, and rising AI adoption. China’s spending will hit USD 46 billion in 2025, buoyed by local vendors and policy support. India’s services market reached USD 5.2 billion in H1 2024 and targets USD 25.5 billion by 2028. Australia and Japan advance localized frameworks, while a 13.3% CAGR in regional data-center capacity underscores the build-out of residency-compliant zones.

Europe grows steadily under GDPR, with sectoral codes pushing encryption and data-minimization features. Latin America’s colocation pipeline could reach USD 10 billion by 2029 as Brazil, Mexico, and Chile court hyperscaler investment. Africa’s demand rises 25-30% annually, yet represents <1% global revenue; local providers differentiate on price and currency flexibility. These dynamics confirm a multipolar cloud storage market where regional ecosystems coexist with global connectivity.