Global IT Spending To Hit US$3.6 Trillion This Year

KUALA LUMPUR, July 10 (Bernama) -- Worldwide IT spending is on pace to reach US$3.6 trillion in 2012, up three per cent from 2011 spending of US$3.5 trillion, according to the latest outlook by Gartner, Inc. The company said its 2012 IT spending outlook has been revised upwards slightly from the 2.5 per cent projection last quarter. "While the challenges facing global economic growth persist - the eurozone crisis, weaker recovery in the United States and a slowdown in China, the outlook has at least stabilised," its Research Vice President Richard Gordon said in a statement on Tuesday. "There has been little change in either business confidence or consumer sentiment in the past quarter, so the short-term outlook is for continued caution in IT spending," he added. However, there are some bright spots for IT providers. The company expects enteprise spending on public cloud services to grow from US$91 billion worldwide in 2011 to US$109 billion in 2012. By 2016, enteprise public cloud services spending will reach US$207 billion. Gordon said that business process as a service (BPaaS) accounted for the vast majority of cloud spending by enterprises. He said other areas such as platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (laaS ) are also growing faster. Worldwide IT services spending is forecast to reach US$864 billion in 2012, up 2.3 per cent from 2011. Demand for consulting services is expected to remain high due to the complexity of environments for global business and technology leaders. Meanwhile, the global telecom services market continued to be largest IT spending market. Growth is expected not only from the net connections, especially in emerging markets, but also in mature markets from the uptake of multiple connected devices including media tablets and consumer electronics devices. -- BERNAMA