Monday Morning Impact – November 24
IDC: Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Spending to Reach $758Bn by 2029
The global Artificial Intelligence infrastructure market is on track for unprecedented growth, poised to reach $758 billion USD in spending by 2029, according to the latest findings from IDC which also reports that organizations increased spending on compute and storage hardware infrastructure for AI deployments by 166% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2025, reaching $82.0 billion.
The AI infrastructure market has consistently sustained high double-digit growth for a few years, driven primarily by investment in servers for AI deployments. Infrastructure deployed in cloud and shared environments accounts for 84.1% of the total spending in AI in 2Q25, with hyperscalers, cloud service providers and digital service providers as the largest contributors to AI spending (86.7%) in the quarter, according to the report. In 2Q25, servers accounted for 98% of the total AI Centric spending, growing 173.2% compared to the same period last year. Servers with an embedded accelerator are the preferred infrastructure for AI platforms, accounting for 91.8% of the total server AI infrastructure spending—growing 207.3% in the second quarter of the year 2025. IDC projects that accelerated servers will exceed 95% of the server AI infrastructure spending by 2029, growing at a 42% 5-year CAGR.
Most of the larger changes in the AI server forecast are due to a significant reassessment of GPU and other accelerators’ server demand in the US, replacing a previously expected slowdown in late 2025 and early 2026 with a new expectation that the AI investment ramp will continue through the end of this year and into 2026, based on continuously growing pipelines from major vendors and buyers.
“There is a distinct possibility that more AI-related investment will be announced in the coming years that will add to and extend the current mass deployment phase of accelerated servers well into 2026 and even beyond,” said Lidice Fernandez, group vice president, Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers. “IDC expects AI adoption to be mainly driven by hyperscalers and cloud service providers along with AI based research and education projects gaining importance by the end of the forecast period.”
Storage spending in AI infrastructure has been driven by the need to manage large datasets required for training AI models, as well as storage of training, checkpoints and repositories of data for inference phases. This category reported a 20.5% year-over-year growth in 2Q25 with 48% of the spending coming from cloud deployments.
The United States leads the global AI infrastructure market, accounting for 76% of the total spending in 2Q25, followed by PRC (11.6%), APJ (6.9%), and EMEA (4.7%).
IDC clients can access additional information via the corresponding IDC Tracker deliverable.
Channel Impact®
The data underscore the growing role of Artificial Intelligence and the subsequent opportunity for all segments of the channel.
Zoom Overhauls Partner Program
Zoom has announced updates to its “Zoom Up” Partner Program intending to provide a more flexible, value-driven approach designed to better support partners and simplify the customer journey.
“Our previous partner program served us well in the early stages, but it wasn’t built to scale with the diversity and growth of our global partner ecosystem,” said Nick Tidd, Head of Global Channel GTM at Zoom. “We saw a clear need for a more flexible, transparent, and performance-driven model that enables our partners to grow with us, while making it easier for customers to find the right expertise at the right time.”
Key updates to the program include distinct tracks for resale and agency partners, a fixed annual evaluation cycle will give partners more structure and predictability, an integrated services certification program, and a new partner program dashboard scheduled to launch in February. Zoom is also moving away from a checklist system to a dynamic points-based framework that allows partners to earn credit for the activities that align most closely with their business goals.
Channel Impact®
The updated program is intended to enhance transparency, accountability, and momentum to how partners plan, deliver, and grow their business with the vendor.
Bitdefender and Cypfer Partner for Advanced Incident Response
Bitdefender has announced a strategic partnership with Cypfer, a global recovery-focused Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) firm. The partnership adds advanced incident response, investigation, and recovery services to Bitdefender’s business portfolio, including GravityZone, the company’s unified security, risk analytics, and compliance platform, managed detection and response (MDR), and other services.
Bitdefender currently delivers endpoint protection (EPP), endpoint detection and response (EDR), extended detection and response (XDR), and cloud-native security. By integrating CYPFER, Bitdefender hopes to strengthen its business security portfolio with faster containment, deeper evidence-based investigations, and a recovery-led response that restores operations quickly and effectively.
Key benefits of the alliance include multi-layered cybersecurity and recovery, global threat intelligence, threat prevention, detection and response, deep investigations, forensics, and recovery through a single integrated workflow.
“Cyberattacks have become increasingly opportunistic, targeting organizations of every size and exploiting everything from unpatched systems to zero-day vulnerabilities,” said Andrei Florescu, president and general manager at Bitdefender Business Solutions Group. “Through our partnership with Cypfer, we are extending affordable, market-leading protection, investigation, and recovery services to businesses worldwide, helping them not only defend against threats but also recover quickly and confidently in the unlikely event of a security breach.”
Channel Impact®
The combination brings together a number of critical capabilities through an integrated solution.
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