Global IT spending is projected to reach a total of $4.4tn this year despite rising inflation, geopolitical disruption and ongoing talent shortages according to the latest forecast by Gartner.
Even with all of these factors at play, the information technology research and consultancy firm notes that CIOs are accelerating their IT investments this year as greater flexibility and agility will make it easier for them to respond to disruption.
At the same time, the impact of inflation on IT hardware like smartphones and business computers is finally dissipating though it is now beginning to spill over into software and services.
Meanwhile, the lack of IT talent has led to more competitive services which is why technology service providers are increasing their prices and this has in turn helped to increase spending growth for both IT hardware and software throughout this year and into next year.
Investment in digital transformation
According to a new press release from Gartner, the rise of enterprise application software, infrastructure software and managed services in both the near and long term demonstrates that digital transformation is an ongoing trend.
For instance, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) now underpins every major consumer focused online offering and mobile application and as such, it accounts for an almost ten percent growth in software spending this year.
When it comes to how CIOs plan to spend their IT budgets this year, $218m will go to data center systems, $674m to software, $824m to devices, 1.2bn to IT services and 1.4bn to communications services like business phone systems and VoIP services.
Although Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been devastating on the world stage, it is not expected to greatly affect global IT spending as price and wage inflation compounded by talent shortages and delivery uncertainties are expected to have a greater impact on the spending plans of CIOs this year.
