Cloud computing enables companies to store their infrastructures remotely using the Internet, ultimately reducing costs and creating value. As per Gartner, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is expected to reach $723.4 billion in 2025, reflecting a rise from $595.7 billion in 2024. The use of Al technologies in IT and business operations continues to accelerate the role of cloud computing in helping operations and outcomes. The cloud use cases have been expanding with an increased focus on distributed, hybrid, cloud-native, and multi-cloud environments, aided by a cross-cloud framework, which should make the public cloud services market achieve a growth rate of 21.5% in 2025.
Gartner believes that 90% of organizations will adopt a hybrid cloud approach through 2027. Resultantly, all segments of the cloud market should see a double-digit growth rate in 2025 demonstrating how I&O (Infrastructure and Operations) leaders remain focused on effectively integrating I&O into their GenAl strategies and laying the groundwork for running Al and GenAl infrastructure at the edge.
Moving forward, the concept of cloud computing is expected to change because of technological enhancements and dynamic business requirements. As per Nasscom Community, quantum computing integration, AI-driven cloud services and multi-cloud, and interoperability are some of the future trends in cloud computing. The emerging field of quantum computing focuses on changing how data processing is done because it can handle even the most complicated computations that some other conventional systems cannot solve. Over the next 5 years, more cloud services are expected to offer its clients quantum computing capabilities, which should in turn help in cryptography, drug development, material science, and optimization.
AI and ML are some of the leading technologies behind innovation in the cloud. Nasscom Community believes that pervasive AI is expected to be in each layer of the cloud system, right from the server level to the customer service level by 2025. Moving forward, AI algorithms should help in predictive analysis and, therefore, prevent problems that can arise with infrastructure, control workload, and reduce automation of tedious tasks.
Future developments in the cloud computing field are expected to enhance the multi-cloud strategies involving using more than one cloud service provider between the business and the cloud altogether. Notably, distributing workloads among several cloud providers would help enterprises maximize cost and performance. The businesses have been dividing their workload across multiple cloud service providers in a bid to control data and resources and use the strength of each cloud service provider.
Our Methodology
To list the 12 Best Cloud Computing Stocks to Buy According to Analysts, we conducted extensive research and sifted through several online rankings. After getting the initial list of 18 stocks, we chose the ones that were popular among hedge funds and that analysts saw the most upside to. Next, the stocks were arranged in ascending order of their average upside potential, as of 10th January. We also mentioned the hedge fund sentiment around each stock, as of Q3 2024.
At Insider Monkey we are obsessed with the stocks that hedge funds pile into. The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A close-up of a laptop with a software engineer coding on the monitor.
Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) focuses on operating an observability and security platform for cloud applications. It provides critical tools and services for cloud infrastructure monitoring and management. Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG)’s broad portfolio of products, including infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring (APM), log management, and security monitoring creates cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Therefore, companies tend to adopt Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG)’s products as their cloud environments become more complex.
Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) continues to benefit from new customer additions and higher adoption of the cloud-based monitoring and analytics platform, courtesy of accelerated digital transformation and cloud migration throughout organizations. The company’s solid adoption of Synthetics and Network Performance Monitoring products should help it in customer wins. Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG)’s Synthetics product simulates user interactions and API calls to point out performance issues before impacting real users.
Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) continues to execute on growth throughout the 3 pillars of observability and it reported that infrastructure monitoring or APM suite and log management together represent over $2.5 billion in ARR. Within the APM suite, the company includes core APM, Synthetics, real user monitoring, and continuous profiler. The company’s network performance monitoring (NPM) product offers visibility into network performance, supporting companies to monitor traffic flows and optimize network usage. The company can combine NPM with observability and security in a single platform. This supports it in differentiating it from standalone NPM tools, which helps in bringing in new customers and cementing its market share.
Brown Capital Management, an investment management company, released its third quarter 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:
“Other examples of negative sentiment include portfolio companies that reported earnings that met or exceeded expectations, but only saw their share prices go up slightly, stay flat or even decline. For example, Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) is a leading SaaS-based, information technology (IT)-monitoring and analytics software platform for developers, IT operations and business users. The platform automates the monitoring of infrastructure, applications databases, networks, logs and security. Datadog’s platform is differentiated by providing a unified view of these systems via a visual interface configured to the needs of each user (i.e., a single pane of glass). Datadog delivered solid operating results in the second quarter of 2024, reporting revenue growth of 27% and raising 2024 full year revenue, operating income and earnings guidance. Despite these solid fundamental results, Datadog’s share price was down 11.8% in the third quarter. We speculate that these market reactions are evidence of the negative environment for high-growth companies. For more, please see the Detractors section below.
Overall DDOG ranks 9th on our list of the best cloud computing stocks to buy according to analysts. While we acknowledge the potential of DDOG as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some deeply undervalued AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for a deeply undervalued AI stock that is more promising than DDOG but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
