IT spending is estimated to grow 4.3 percent to $3.7 trillion in 2018 from an estimated spending of $3.5 trillion in 2017, according to Gartner.
Enterprise software market will grow at 8.5 percent to $354 billion in 2017 and 9.8 percent to $387 billion in 2018.
The global devices market will grow 5.3 percent in 2017 to $664 billion and 5 percent to $697 billion in 2018.
IT services market will grow 4 percent to $931 billion in 2017 and 5.3 percent to $980 billion in 2018.
Communications services market will grow 0.9 percent to $1,387 billion in 2017 and 2.2 percent to $1,417 billion in 2018.
The size of the data center systems market will be $173 billion with 1.7 percent growth in 2017 and $176 billion with 1.8 percent increase in 2018.
Gartner said that the global enterprise software and IT services market continues to exhibit strong growth, with communications services continuing to drive the majority of spending. Software spending is projected to grow 8.5 percent in 2017, and it will grow another 9.4 percent in 2018 to $387 billion.
IT services spending will grow 4 percent in 2017 to $931 billion, and increase 5.3 percent in 2018 to $980 billion.
Devices market revenue will grow at 5.3 percent in 2017 and 5 percent in 2018. Increased average selling prices for premium phones in mature markets, partially due to the introduction of the iPhone 8 and 10, along with demand for PCs from businesses replacing their machines with Windows 10 PCs is driving the growth.
Gartner has identified 10 markets within these segments that will make up the most dynamic portion of the IT spending forecast in 2018.
“Global IT spending is showing little overall growth, as are traditional markets. These top 10 markets will be the key to remaining relevant and achieving growth in the future,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.
Gartner said organizations that are not creating new digital business models or new ways to engage constituents or customers, are falling behind. Technology vendors that do not move more quickly than their clients, will be left behind.
Meanwhile, the software-defined storage (SDS) market will achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5 percent over the 2017-2021 with revenues of nearly $16.2 billion in 2021, according to IDC.
Within the SDS market, the expansion of three key sub-segments – file, object, and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) – is being driven forward by next-generation datacenter requirements.
Of these sub-segments, HCI is both the fastest growing with a five-year CAGR of 26.6 percent and the largest overall with revenues approaching $7.15 billion in 2021. Object-based storage will experience a CAGR of 10.3 percent over the forecast period while file-based storage and block-based storage will trail with CAGRs of 6.3 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively.
Because hyperconverged systems typically replace legacy SAN- and NAS-based storage systems, all the major enterprise storage systems providers have committed to the HCI market in a major way over the past 18 months.
This has made the HCI sub-segment one of the most active merger and acquisition markets as these providers prepare to capture anticipated SAN and NAS revenue losses to HCI as enterprises shift toward SDS solutions.
