How financial services will drive IT spending in 2017

Over five per cent growth expected for the sector

Financial services will be among the leaders in IT spending growth this year with over five per cent growth expected, according to IDC.

"The banking industry shows largely positive indicators for spending plans, with key projects focused on big data and analytics," Jessica Goepfert, program director of Customer Insights & Analysis, at IDC, said in a statement.

"Almost all of the major banks around the world have highlighted that their big data and analytics deployments are now a critical part of their competitive strategies. This is particularly the case on the retail banking side as the banks develop their omnichannel strategies, seek to understand and respond to their customers' behavior and build strategies for excellence in customer experience."

According to the analyst firm's Worldwide Semiannual IT Spending Guide: Industry and Company Size, the sector will be topped only by the professional services sector (including cloud service providers), which IDC expects will grow IT spending by six percent in 2017.

In addition, the banking sector, along with telecommunications and professional services, will show the most growth in terms of IT services spending, at four percent, respectively, according to IDC.

In terms of mobile devices, IDC noted that commercial tablet sales will be "much healthier" this year than consumer spending, which will primarily be around smartphones. Tablets will see positive growth in the enterprise and public sector space, with "strong" double-digit growth rates in healthcare, services, telecommunications, manufacturing and utilities as the markets take on new form factors and professional devices, IDC said.

Spending on traditional PCs in the enterprise space, meanwhile, will be "weaker, but will still be positive outside of the consumer and government sectors", IDC said, naming the education sector as seeing the most growth, thanks to a 13 percent increase in notebook sales. It noted desktop PC sales will drop in most sectors.

"Mobile is still driving a lot of enterprise and public sector decision making in 2017," Stephen Minton, VP of Customer Insights & Analysis at IDC, said in a statement. "Notebook PC sales are making up for declines in desktop upgrades, with particularly strong growth in the most portable form factors and strong adoption trends in the education market. New high-end tablets, including hybrid devices, are also gaining momentum with enterprise buyers as business use cases are more clearly defined."

IDC also predicted that cloud service providers will continue to see datacenter investment growth in the latter half of 2017 after slowing down for a bit. It said this will push spending by professional services firms on server and storage to nearly nine percent growth for 2017.

It noted that server upgrade cycles this year will bring growth in vertical industries.

In the software space, professional services will head the market (nine percent growth), as well as banking, securities and investment services, retail and healthcare (eight percent growth, respectively).

Looking ahead, IDC predicts IT spending will hit $2.7 trillion by 2021, with consumers, banks, manufacturers and telecommunications providers leading the market.

Software spending will exceed $600 billion by this time, IDC said, pointing to top contributors coming from manufacturing, banking and professional services.