2012 IT Spending to Hit $3.6 Trillion

For 2012, Gartner is now forecasting worldwide IT spending to come in at $3.6 trillion. That’s only a 3 percent gain over 2011, when $3.5 trillion was spent. In 2011, IT spending grew at 7.9 percent. While the 3 percent growth rate for 2012 is less than half of 2011 growth rate, Gartner’s figure is actually a revised number. Earlier in the year, Gartner had predicted a growth rate for 2012 of only 2.5 percent. Looking out to 2013 Gartner is forecasting slightly better growth of 4.4 percent.

“While the challenges facing global economic growth persist — the eurozone crisis, weaker U.S. recovery, a slowdown in China — the outlook has at least stabilized,” said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement. “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.”

The largest chunk of the global IT spend is Telecom Services, accounting for $1.7 Trillion. Telecom is also the slowest growing segment coming in at only a 1.4 percent growth rate for 2012, down from the 6.0 percent growth rate for 2011. Telecom equipment is also a large component of the global IT spending forecast, with $377 billion forecast for 2012, for a 10.8 percent growth rate. Gartner is forecasting a slower growth rate of 8.3 percent for telecom equipment in 2013.

IT Services comes in second at $864 billion set to be spent in 2012 for a 2.3 percent growth rate, down from a 7.7 percent growth rate in 2011. While IT Services overall are not growing at a rapid rate, spending on public cloud services is another story. Gartner is forecasting that $109 billion will be spent in 2012 on public cloud services, up from $91 billion in 2011. Looking out four more years to 2016 and Gartner is forecasting a cloud spend of $207 billion.

Read the full story at Datamation:
Global IT Spending Set to Grow 3 Percent in 2012

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.