Global IT Spending To Slow in 2022
Worldwide IT spending is projected to grow 5.5% from 2021 to 2022, reaching $4.5 trillion, according to Gartner.
Enterprise software is pegged to grow 11.5% in 2022, making it the highest growth segment. The increase will be driven by infrastructure software spending continuing to outpace application software spending.
John-David Lovelock, distinguished research VP at Gartner, said enterprises will increasingly build new technologies and software instead of buying and implementing them. This will in turn lead to overall slower spending levels next year vs. this one.
“However,” he added, “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.”
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Global spending growth on devices reached a peak in 2021 at 15.1%, thanks to an increase in remote work, telehealth and remote learning. Despite this, 2022 will still show an uptick in enterprises that upgrade devices and/or invest in multiple devices to thrive in a hybrid work setting, according to the research firm.
“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’s methodology relies heavily on analysis of sales by thousands of vendors across the entire range of IT products and services. The research firm’s research techniques are also complemented by secondary research sources that is uses to develop a database of market size data on which to base its forecast.
