Global IT spend to top £2.9 trillion this year

Despite economic uncertainty, Brexit and the US-China trade war, IT spending expected to grow again in 2019

Growing demand for cloud services and IoT devices is expected to fuel a 3.2 percent increase in worldwide IT spend, taking total spending to £2.9 trillion in 2019.

Today’s figures come from analyst house Gartner, which analysed thousands of vendor sales across six key enterprise IT segments. It says a key driver of IT spend is the continuing shift to cloud which in-turn is fueling demand for enterprise software.

Software spend is projected to grow 8.5 percent to £327 billion in 2019, with more of the budget again switching to the virtually default cloud software delivery model of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Mobile slump

Gartner says the mobile phone market is saturated due to customers in China, US and Western Europe increasingly clinging on to old devices. Smartphone market growth relies heavily on “replacement cycles” –  oft-annual releases of well-differentiated flagship phones that manufacturers like Apple and Samsung are increasingly struggling to bring to market.

Despite a slowdown in smartphone sales Gartner anticipates the devices segment to grow 1.6 percent in 2019 and top £515 billion, as spending shifts from iPhones to IoT.

“Where the devices segment is saturated, IoT is not,” Gartner said in a press release.

However, while organisations are increasingly turning to new technologies such as IoT to drive digital business, they are failing to invest in the human capital necessary to exploit them. Gartner says nearly half of the IT workforce is in urgent need of developing skills or competencies to support digital business initiatives.

“Despite uncertainty fueled by recession rumours, Brexit, and trade wars and tariffs, the likely scenario for IT spending in 2019 is growth,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.

“IT is no longer just a platform that enables organisations to run their business on. It is becoming the engine that moves the business,” added Lovelock.

In contrast, analyst house PwC last month claimed that 30% of CEOs do not foresee global economic growth in 2019, attributing the slump to a significant skills gap in data analytics.

More detailed analysis from Gartner on the outlook for the IT industry is available in a complimentary webinar.