Daily News
View All NewsIT spending to fall by 8% worldwide this year
Worldwide spending on IT is expected to fall by 8% this year to a total of $3.4 trillion, according to a forecast by Gartner Inc.
“CIOs have moved into emergency cost optimization which means that investments will be minimized and prioritized on operations that keep the business running, which will be the top priority for most organizations through 2020,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research VP at Gartner.
All segments of IT are expected to experience a decline this year. However, some sub-segments will experience growth. For example, “public cloud services” (which falls into multiple IT categories) will be a bright spot with growth forecast at 19% this year. Cloud-based telephony and messaging as well as cloud-based conferencing will also see spending increases.
Here is the worldwide IT spending forecast by Gartner:
| (in billions) | 2019 spending | 2019 growth | 2020 spending | 2020 growth |
| Data center systems | $211,633 | 0.7% | $191,122 | -9.7% |
| Enterprise software | $458,133 | 8.8% | $426,255 | -6.9% |
| Devices | $698,086 | -2.2% | $589,879 | -15.5% |
| IT services | $1,031,578 | 3.8% | $952,461 | -7.7% |
| Communications services | $1,357,432 | -1.6% | $1,296,627 | -4.5% |
| Overall IT | $3,756,862 | 1.0% | $3,456,344 | -8.0% |
“IT spending recovery will be slow through 2020, with the hardest hit industries, such as entertainment, air transport and heavy industry, taking over three years to come back to 2019 IT spending levels,” Lovelock said. “Recovery requires a change in mindset for most organizations. There is no bouncing back. There needs to be a reset focused on moving forward.”