Worldwide IT spending in 2021 is forecast to grow 4 percent to $3.8 trillion, according to a forecast by Gartner on Tuesday.
IT spending in 2020 is expected to drop 5.4 percent to $3.6 trillion.
“In the 25 years that Gartner has been forecasting IT spending, never has there been a market with this much volatility,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.
Enterprise software is expected to have the strongest rebound in 2021 — 7.2 percent due to the digitalisation efforts by enterprises supporting a remote workforce, delivering virtual services such as distance learning or telehealth, and leveraging hyperautomation to ensure pandemic-driven demands are met.
Spending on data centre systems will experience the second highest of growth of 5.2 percent in 2021 as hyperscalers accelerate global data center build out and regular organisations resume data centre expansion plans and allow staff to be physically back onsite.
Despite the increase in cloud activity in 2020 as organisations shifted to a remote-work-first environment, enterprise cloud spending — which falls into multiple categories — will not be reflected in vendors’ revenue until 2021.
The spending slowdown that took place from roughly April through August of this year, coupled with cloud service providers’ “try before you buy” programs, is shifting cloud revenue out of 2020.
