Research house Gartner has projected a global $3.5trn IT spend in 2017, which will see a 2.4% increase from last year.
Research house Gartner has projected a global $3.5trn IT spend in 2017, which will see a 2.4% increase from last year.
The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast is an indicator for technology trends across the hardware, software, IT services and telecom markets. Gartner states that next-generation offerings, such as IoT in manufacturing and blockchain, are fuelled by business and technology platforms that will be the driver for new categories of spending.
Gartner expects the worldwide enterprise software market to grow 7.6% in 2017 as software applications enable organisations to derive revenue from digital business channels. Furthermore, worldwide spending on devices, such as mobile phones and tablets, is projected to grow 3.8% in 2017, to reach $65bn.
Other areas forecasted include data centre systems which will see 0.3% growth, IT services are expected to see a 3.1% increase and communication services will grow by 0.3%.
John-David Lovelock, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, delves into enterprise software, stating: "With the increased adoption of SaaS-based enterprise applications, there also comes an increase in acceptance of IT operations management (ITOM) tools that are also delivered from the cloud
"These cloud-based tools allow infrastructure and operations (I&O) organisations to more rapidly add functionality and adopt newer technologies to help them manage faster application release cycles. If the I&O team does not monitor and track the rapidly changing environment, it risks infrastructure and application service degradation, which ultimately impacts the end-user experience and can have financial as well as brand repercussions."