Forrester Research has claimed that global IT spending is set to rise in 2010, signalling an end to the technology downturn of recent years.
The analyst house predicts that spending in the IT industry will rise 8.1% to more than $1.6 trillion, driven by an improvement in the wider economic situation, a weaker dollar and a new cycle of tech innovation and growth.
The dollar’s weakness against the Euro will mean tech spending will grow 11% in Europe (when measured in US dollars), while Asia/Pacific will see growth of 6.2%.
Spending on software will rise 9.7% around the globe, while computer equipment is tipped for growth of 8.2%, according to Forrester. The company claims that communications equipment spending will increase by 7.6%.
“2009 was a miserable year for tech vendors, especially for sellers of capital equipment like PCs, servers, routers, and licensed software, and for systems integrators who helped implement that software,” said the report’s author Andrew Bartels in a blog posting.
“2010 will be a much better year, especially for these very same vendors. We’re not talking boom yet, so we are not predicting double-digit growth rates across the tech market,” said Bartels. “But, as our latest tech market report shows we do think there will be a solid tech recovery in 2010, with growth rates in the high single digits.”
Bartels also said that he expects big businesses will lead the IT spending, rather than SMBs. “For large corporations, the financial crisis is mostly over – they can tap the corporate bond, commercial paper, and equity markets as they did before. But SMBs depend on banks for financing, and banks are still making it hard to borrow.”
The new cycle of tech innovation and growth that Bartels believes will help boost IT spending is what Forrester calls Smart Computing. “Businesses and governments are starting to make big investments in leading edge technologies of awareness, analytics, and advanced applications, as well as in new foundational technologies of service-oriented architecture, server and storage virtualisation and cloud computing, and unified communications,” he said.
“Demand for these technologies was already driving above-average tech market growth in the US in late 2007 and early 2008, before the financial crisis effectively froze all forms of capital investment,” Bartels said. “As financial markets recover and the freeze on capital investment thaws, we expect that deferred demand will come back in 2010, especially in the second half of the year.”
