Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 5.5% from 2021, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.
“Enterprises will increasingly build new technologies and software, rather than buy and implement them, leading to overall slower spending levels in 2022 compared to 2021,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. “However, digital tech initiatives remain a top strategic business priority for companies as they continue to reinvent the future of work, focusing spending on making their infrastructure bulletproof and accommodating increasingly complex hybrid work for employees going into 2022.”
Enterprise software is expected to have the highest growth in 2022 at 11.5% driven by infrastructure software spending continuing to outpace application software spending. Global spending growth on devices reached a peak in 2021 (15.1%) as remote work, telehealth and remote learning took hold, but Gartner expects 2022 will still show an uptick in enterprises that upgrade devices and/or invest in multiple devices to thrive in a hybrid work setting.
“What changed in 2020 and 2021 was not really the technology itself, but people’s willingness and eagerness to adopt it and use it in different ways,” said Lovelock. “In 2022, CIOs need to reconfigure how work is done by embracing business composability and the technologies that accommodate asynchronous workflows.”
Gartner expects IT services spending to reach $1.294 trillion in 2022
IT services is expected to grow at an 8.6% clip in 2022. IT services are becoming one of the most highly budgeted IT expenditures in organizations as IT and business leaders redirect their focus from tactical technology deployments to focus more on the needs of the business. From cybersecurity services to preempt ransomware attacks, to enabling better customer experience, IT services are in high demand by nearly all enterprises today as they forge ahead on the road to digital transformation.
“Digital tech initiatives remain a top strategic business priority for companies as they continue to reinvent the future of work, focusing spending on making their infrastructure bulletproof and accommodating increasingly complex hybrid work for employees going into 2022,” said Gartner’s Lovelock.
The Gartner quarterly IT spending forecast delivers a unique perspective on IT spending across the hardware, software, IT services and telecommunications segments.
More information on the most recent IT spending forecast can be found here.
