Worldwide IT spending to hit US$3.7 trillion

Global IT spending has been tipped to reach US$3.7 trillion in 2018, according to Gartner.

This would be an increase of 4.5% from the previous year.

"Global IT spending growth began to turn around in 2017, with continued growth expected over the next few years. However, uncertainty looms as organisations consider the potential impacts of Brexit, currency fluctuations, and a possible global recession," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.

"Despite this uncertainty, businesses will continue to invest in IT as they anticipate revenue growth, but their spending patterns will shift. Projects in digital business, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and progression from big data to algorithms to machine learning to artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to be main drivers of growth."

Enterprise software continues to exhibit strong growth, with worldwide software spending projected to grow 9.5% in 2018 and another 8.4% in 2019 to total $421 billion. Organisations are expected to increase spending on enterprise application software in 2018, with more of the budgets shifting to software as a service (SaaS). The growing availability of SaaS-based solutions is encouraging new adoption and spending across many subcategories, such as financial management systems (FMS), human capital management (HCM) and analytic applications.

The device segment is also expected to grow 5.6% in 2018. In 2017, the device segment experienced growth for the first time in two years with an increase of 5.7%. End-user spending on mobile phones is expected to increase marginally as average selling prices continue to creep upward even as unit sales are forecast to be lower. PC growth is expected to be flat in 2018 even as continued Windows 10 migration is expected to drive positive growth in the business market in China, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

"Looking at some of the key areas driving spending over the next few years, Gartner forecasts $2.9 trillion in new business value opportunities attributable to AI by 2021, as well as the ability to recover 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity," said Lovelock.

"That business value is attributable to using AI to, for example, drive efficiency gains, create insights that personalise the customer experience, entice engagement and commerce, and aid in expanding revenue-generating opportunities as part of new business models driven by the insights from data."

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Alexey Novikov

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