The cloud may be the buzzword that businesses use to signal a forward-thinking approach to investors, but the concept is quickly becoming one of the most important in enterprise. Companies large and small will soon invest billions in cloud computing to establish a flexible platform for their operations.

Market research firm IHS today issued a new report predicting that enterprise spending on cloud-related technologies in 2017 is set to be triple the amount spent on such technology in 2011.

IHS estimates that spending on cloud computing technologies will reach $174.2 billion this year, a 20% increase over the $145.2 billion spent on the segment in 2013. The firm also estimates that cloud-related revenue will hit over 235 billion by the year 2017, up 35% from the firm’s 2014 spending estimates.

Cloud-related spending, according to IHS, will include cloud-based services on which businesses can build both applications and infrastructure. The spending also includes the physical infrastructure related to cloud computing, including the huge number of servers that will be needed to support the segment’s growth.

“With the cloud touching nearly every consumer and enterprise around the globe, spending for cloud-related storage, servers, applications and content will be dedicated toward building a framework that is rapidly scalable, highly dynamic, available on-demand and requiring minimal management,” said Jagdish Rebello, principal analyst for the cloud and big data at IHS. “The robust growth will come as an increasing number of large and small enterprises move more of their applications to the cloud, while also looking at data analytics to drive new insights into consumer behavior.”