Global IT spending to rise in 2019: Gartner

Worldwide IT spending will total USD 3.8 trillion in 2019, an increase of 3.2% from expected spending of USD 3.7 trillion in 2018, according to Gartner.

Enterprise software spending is forecast to experience the highest growth with an 8.3% increase in 2019 (see Table 1). Software as a service (SaaS) is driving growth in almost all software segments, particularly customer relationship management (CRM), due to increased focus on providing better customer experiences. Cloud software will grow at more than 22% this year compared with 6% growth for all other forms of software. While core applications such as ERP, CRM and supply chain continue to get the lion share of dollars, security and privacy are of particular interest right now. 88% of recently surveyed global CIOs have deployed or plan to deploy cybersecurity software and other technology in the next 12 months.

In 2018, data center systems are expected to grow 6%, buoyed by a strong server market that saw spending growth of more than 10% over the last year, and in 2018 will come in at 5.7% growth. However, by 2019 servers will shift back to a declining market and drop 1% to 3% every year for the next five years. This, in turn, will impact overall data center systems spending as growth slows to 1.6% in 2019.

IT services will be a key driver for IT spending in 2019 as the market is forecast to reach USD 1 trillion in 2019, an increase of 4.7% from 2018. An expected global slowdown in economic prosperity, paired with internal pressures to cut spending, is driving organizations to optimize enterprise external spend for business services such as consulting. In a recent Gartner study, 46% of organizations indicated that IT services and supplier consolidation was in their top three most-effective cost-optimization approaches.

Worldwide spending for devices — PCs, tablets and mobile phones — is forecast to grow 2.4% in 2019, reaching USD 706 billion, up from USD 689 billion in 2018. Demand for PCs in the corporate sector has been strong, driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades that should continue until 2020. However, the PC market may see some impact from the Intel CPU shortage. While this shortage will have some short-term impacts, Gartner does not expect any lasting impact on overall PC demand. The current expectation is that the shortage will continue into 2019, but Intel will prioritize the high-end CPU as well as the CPUs for business PCs. In the meantime, AMD will pick up the part of the market where Intel cannot supply CPUs.

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