IT spending growth to slow

Gartner figures point to a lukewarm market

Global IT spending growth is set to slow markedly this year, according to Gartner.

Figures from the market watcher forecast that the worldwide market for IT and telecoms hardware and services is forecast to grow three per cent to $3.6tn (£2.3tn) in 2012. This represents an upward revision on the analyst's previous projection of 2.5 per cent, but is still way below the nigh on eight per cent expansion recorded in 2011.

Hardware spending in 2012 is projected to swell 3.4 per cent annually to $420bn, with the growth rate down four points from the 7.4 per cent recorded last year. The worth of the enterprise software market is set to reach $281bn in 2012, with expansion slowing from 9.8 to 4.3 per cent.

The IT services space is set to see growth pinched more than most this year, with global spending projected to rise 2.3 per cent to $864bn. This compares with a growth rate of 7.7 per cent last time out.

The telecoms arena will also see growth stymied, with hardware sales growing 10.8 per cent to $377bn, with services spending up just 1.4 per cent to almost $1.7bn. This compares with growth rates of 17.5 and six per cent respectively in 2011.

Next year all markets – with the exception of telecoms hardware – are forecast to post an accelerated growth rate. None, however, will reach the market expansion levels enjoyed last year.

Gartner research vice president Richard Gordon said: "While the challenges facing global economic growth persist – [such as] the eurozone crisis, weaker US recovery and a slowdown in China – the outlook has at least stabilised. There has been little change in either business confidence or consumer sentiment in the past quarter, so the short-term outlook is for continued caution in IT spending."

One market set to defy the tepid market conditions is public cloud services, where spending is forecast to leap almost 20 per cent annually to $109bn this year. By 2016, the market is expected to be worth a global total of $207bn.

Gordon added: "Business-process-as-a-service still accounts for the vast majority of cloud spending by organisations, but other areas such as platform-as-a-service, SaaS and infrastructure-as-a-service are growing faster."