At a glance
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the fastest-growing line in Gartner's Australian forecast, up 22.1 per cent to A$9.1 billion in 2027 and moving faster than any other category it counts.
AI-optimised IaaS is the faster-growing part of that line at 58.5 per cent, and data centre systems are up 16.6 per cent.
Gartner lifted its Australian IaaS figure for 2026 between releases, from A$7.09 billion in May to A$7.48 billion in September.
Three groups sell IaaS into Australia: the global cloud providers, a set of Australian-owned providers, and the AI compute providers renting out AI chips by the hour.
IREN is headquartered in Sydney, and the purchase agreements taking its fleet to 150,000 AI chips name sites in Texas and British Columbia. IREN expects power at its first Australian campus, 800MW at Bundey in South Australia, in 2028.
IaaS outgrows every other line in Australian IT
Gartner published its Australian IT spending forecast on 16 September 2026, at its IT Symposium on the Gold Coast. One line in it grows faster than any other, and it is the line this industry supplies: infrastructure as a service, or IaaS, the computing power Australian organisations rent instead of owning. Every dollar of IaaS is paid to use a machine sitting in a data hall somebody built, so the figure tracks demand for Australian data centre space.
The next fastest categories are data centre systems at 16.6 per cent and software at 13.3 per cent. Gartner expects Australian IaaS spending to reach A$9.1 billion in 2027, up 22.1 per cent. It puts the acceleration down mainly to AI-optimised IaaS, which it expects to grow 58.5 per cent.
Gartner's data centre systems line covers the servers, storage and network equipment that fill the halls, and server spending inside it rises 19.7 per cent in 2027. Gartner attributes the server figure to investment by service providers and hyperscalers.
The IaaS figure has also been revised upward inside 2026. Gartner published a public cloud forecast for Australia in May 2026 that put the line at A$7.09 billion for the year, growing 24.1 per cent. The September release puts the same year at A$7.48 billion, growing 25.7 per cent.
Gartner IaaS forecast | Spending | Growth |
|---|---|---|
2026, published May 2026 | A$7.09bn | 24.1% |
2026, published September 2026 | A$7.48bn | 25.7% |
2027, published September 2026 | A$9.12bn | 22.1% |
Source: Gartner. Australian spending on infrastructure as a service.
The trades and engineers behind the IaaS spend
That spending buys hardware someone has to specify, install, energise and maintain, and platforms someone has to design and run. Two labour pools sit behind the forecast: electrical and mechanical trades on the build, and engineers, solutions architects and data specialists on the platform.
Jobs and Skills Australia's March quarter 2026 employer survey found 55.1 per cent of technician and trades vacancies were filled, the lowest of the eight occupation groups it measures. The roles on the Certified Strategic data centre jobs board sit in the same band, and the talent squeeze behind them is concentrated in the trades.
IaaS sits one layer above colocation
NEXTDC, AirTrunk and CDC lease space, power, cooling and interconnection, priced by the rack or the megawatt, and the customer installs its own servers in that space and runs them itself. That is colocation.
IaaS is the layer above. The provider owns the machines, installs them in a hall it owns or leases, and sells the use of them by the hour, the month or on a multi-year contract. The customer buys computing time and nothing else. NEXTDC draws that boundary in its own account of its arrangement with Sharon AI: NEXTDC supplies the liquid-cooled halls and the connections between them, and Sharon AI runs its cloud platform on top. Two further layers sit above IaaS. Platform as a service sells the tools to build and run software, and software as a service sells the finished application.
The racks in an AI-optimised IaaS hall carry graphics processors, the chips that train and run AI models, rather than general-purpose ones. The hall around them needs the concentrated power draw and liquid cooling that define an AI data centre. It is sold the same way, and it is the part of the line Gartner expects to grow 58.5 per cent.
Three groups sell IaaS in Australia
Gartner gives segment totals, not a provider-by-provider split.
Group | What it rents | Named Australian sellers |
|---|---|---|
Global cloud providers | Computing, storage and networking from their own Australian regions | AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle, IBM |
Australian-owned providers | Australian-hosted IaaS, much of it sold to government, banks and insurers | Vault Cloud, AUCloud, Macquarie, Interactive, Brennan, Atturra |
AI compute providers | AI chips, rented by the hour or on contract | Sharon AI, Firmus, ResetData, SCX.ai |
Source: company disclosures
AWS opened its Sydney region in November 2012 and added Melbourne in January 2023. On 14 June 2025 it committed A$20 billion to Australian infrastructure through to 2029. Microsoft committed A$25 billion on 23 April 2026, running to the end of 2029. Amazon's own product pages list H100 and H200-class NVIDIA processors in Sydney, and its own Trainium chips in Melbourne.
Among the Australian-owned providers, Vault Cloud runs Canberra and Sydney facilities and names the Department of Defence and the New South Wales government among its customers. The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, the federal government's industry investment fund, has put A$22.5 million into it. AUCloud is the cloud brand of AUCyber, listed on the ASX as CYB, and Macquarie sells its own private cloud alongside a managed Microsoft Azure practice for federal and state agencies opened on 22 July 2026. Atturra appears in both groups, selling IaaS and platform services out of halls it leases inside NEXTDC facilities, so one company rents the building and the other rents out the machines inside it.
The AI compute providers are the newest of the three, and NVIDIA named eight Australian partners for up to 2GW of AI factories on 10 September 2026. Sharon AI took its Melbourne cluster live inside NEXTDC's M3 on 13 October 2025, with the University of New South Wales running the first workloads, and has contracted around 70MW of NEXTDC capacity.
Firmus sells clusters of AI chips and time on them by the hour alongside the AI factories it builds and operates. ResetData opened AI-F1 in central Melbourne on 12 February 2025, selling time on 1,024 NVIDIA H200 processors. SCX.ai listed on the ASX on 21 August 2026 from a first site at Equinix SY5 in Sydney, running SambaNova chips built to run trained AI models rather than train them.
IREN is headquartered in Sydney and listed on both the ASX and Nasdaq, and reported US$128.8 million of AI cloud services revenue in the financial year to June 2026. On 4 March 2026 it announced purchase agreements for more than 50,000 NVIDIA B300 processors, taking its total fleet to 150,000 chips. The sites named for that capacity are Childress in Texas and Mackenzie in British Columbia, with delivery phased through the second half of 2026.
The company announced its first Australian campus on 3 June 2026, an 800MW site at Bundey in South Australia, with power expected to start flowing in 2028. Megaport is in a comparable position. It bought Latitude.sh in a deal announced on 10 November 2025 and sells time on AI chips from Ashburn and Chicago. It spent A$54.3 million on AI compute contracts in the financial year to June 2026 ahead of installation. Gartner counts spending by Australian organisations, so capacity energised offshore sits outside the Australian IaaS figure.
Certified Strategic's coverage of neocloud providers in Australia follows this group, and the data centres in Australia directory lists the halls they sit in.
What to watch
AI-optimised IaaS. Gartner's 58.5 per cent is the sharpest rate of any component it breaks out, and it applies to the smallest starting figure, so a handful of contracts will move the absolute figure. Providers that publish AI chip availability region by region will show where the machines actually sit.
The direction of the next revision. Gartner moved its Australian IaaS figure for 2026 up between its May and September releases. The capacity that would move it again switches on after 2027, the last year Gartner forecasts, with the AWS and Microsoft commitments running to 2029 and IREN expecting power at Bundey in 2028. The balance of risk to the 2027 figure sits on the upside, and it turns on when that capacity switches on.