Gartner’s latest forecast reveals that worldwide IT spending is projected to total US$4.6 trillion in 2023, an increase of 5.1 per cent from 2022.
The need for IT next year is expected to be strong, as enterprises further their digital business initiatives in response to economic turmoil.
“Enterprise IT spending is recession-proof, as CEOs and CFOs, rather than cutting IT budgets, are increasing spending on digital business initiatives,” said John-David Lovelock, VP analyst at Gartner. “Economic turbulence will change the context for technology investments, increasing spending in some areas and accelerating declines in others, but it is not projected to materially impact the overall level of enterprise technology spending.
Lovelock also noted that inflation has cut into consumer purchasing power worldwide. Because of this, consumers are spending less, pushing 2022 device purchases until 2023, driving spending on devices down by just over 8 per cent in 2022 and 0.6 per cent in 2023.”
There is sufficient spending within data center markets to maintain existing on-premises data centers, and organizations are also continuing to spend money on different cloud options, as evidenced by the 11.3 per cent projected growth for software spending in 2023.
Additionally, a July 2022 Gartner survey of over 200 chief financial officers found that almost 70 per cent plan to increase their spend on digital technologies.
“Companies will use digital technology primarily to reshape their revenue stream, adding new products and services, changing the cash flow of existing products and services, as well as changing the value proposition of existing products and services,” said Lovelock. “This trend has fed the shift from buying technology to building, composing and assembling technology to meet specific business drivers. This shift is foundational to the growth of cloud over on-premises for new IT spending.
