IT spending has increased at a meteoric rate in recent years, and now 2018 has been forecast as the year that that a total spend of $1 trillion will be exceeded.
For this prediction to prove accurate, a strong 4.9 per cent spending increase from the $974 billion spent in 2017 is required.
Gartner is behind this prediction, also providing a breakdown of its forecast that includes forecasts of spending growth in specific IT spaces. Enterprise software stands out, expected to experience a 10 per cent growth increase in 2018, contrasted by 7.6 per cent growth in 2017.
A spending influx is also expected in IT Services, an area that Gartner foresees experiencing 6.2 per cent growth, making significant progress from the 2.5 per cent growth increase in 2017. Data Centre Systems are also expected to experience 3.1 per cent growth in 2018, climbing from just one per cent this year.
Foreseeing an increased interest in hardware, Gartner has predicted that the overall spend on devices will grow as well, reaching 4 per cent growth in 2018, up from 2.6 per cent in 2017.
Placing a focus on the UK, John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, said: “The UK has EMEA’s largest IT market and its decline of 3.1 per cent in 2017 impacts the forecast heavily… Weak sterling and political uncertainty since Brexit are reducing UK IT spending in 2017, while other major IT markets in EMEA grew steadily.”
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Despite this, UK industries such as fintech are booming, with investment interest at an all-time high. The UK fintech industry is leading the way in Europe without contest, taking a pole position globally following the giant presences of China and the United States.
“The forecast highlights that businesses are broadly reducing spending on owning IT hardware, and increasing spending on consuming IT as-a-service… In the total IT forecast the business trends are masked somewhat by consumer spending, but when we look at enterprise-only spending the new dynamics between the categories are much clearer,” Lovelock said.
