Worldwide IT spending is expected to reach $3.4 trillion in 2010, an increase of 5.3% compared to $3.2 trillion in 2009, according to IT research and advisory firm Gartner.
Gartner forecasts IT industry to continue to show steady grow with IT spending in 2011 projected to surpass $3.5 trillion, a 4.2% increase from 2010.
Worldwide computing hardware spending is expected increase by 5.7% to $353bn in 2010, with consumer spending on mobile PCs driving hardware spending in 2010. Enterprise hardware spending is expected to will grow again in 2010, but it will remain below its 2008 level through 2014.
The firms said that spending on storage will see the fastest growth in terms of enterprise spending as the volume of enterprise data that needs to be stored continues to increase. Near-term spending on servers is expected to be concentrated on lower-end servers and longer-term server spending will be curtailed by virtualization, consolidation and potentially, cloud computing.
According to Gartner, software spending is expected to increase by 5.1% to $232bn in 2010, compared to $221bn last year. Spending on IT services is expected to increase by 5.7% to $821bn in 2010 while Telecom spending is on pace to total close to $2 trillion in 2010, a 5.1% increase from $1.9 trillion in 2009. In 2010, majority of enterprise software markets are expected to see positive growth.
Between 2010 and 2014, the mobile device share of the telecom market is expected to increase from 11% to 14%, while the service share drops from 80% to 77% and the infrastructure share remains stable at 9% of the total market, Gartner said.
Gartner said that the infrastructure market, which includes all the software to build, run and manage an enterprise, is the largest segment in terms of revenue and the fastest-growing through the 2014. The hottest software segments through 2014 include virtualisation, security, data integration/data quality and business intelligence.
The firm forecasts web conferencing, team collaboration and enterprise content management to have double-digit compound annual growth rates (CAGR), in the face of growing competition surrounding social networking and content.
George Shiffler, research director at Gartner. “Consumer PC spending will contribute nearly 4 percentage points of hardware spending growth in 2010, powered by strong consumer spending on mobile PCs. Additionally, professional PC spending will contribute just over 1 percentage point of spending growth in 2010 as organisations begin their migration to Windows 7 toward the end of the year.”
