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Worldwide IT Spending Ticks Up

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Global spending on IT is expected to increase 1.1 percent this year compared to 2018, reaching a total of $3.79 trillion, according to a recent forecast from research firm Gartner.

Part of the change can be attributed to political and economic factors, according to John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "Currency headwinds fueled by the strengthening U.S. dollar have caused us to revise our 2019 IT spending forecast down from the previous quarter," he said in a statement. "Through the remainder of 2019, the U.S. dollar is expected to trend stronger, while enduring tremendous volatility due to uncertain economic and political environments and trade wars."

The largest source of growth is the enterprise software market, driven by a shift of IT spending from on-premise offerings to new, cloud-based alternatives, the Gartner forecast said. While "the largest cloud shift has so far occurred in application software … Gartner expects increased growth for the infrastructure software segment in the near-term, particularly in integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and application platform as a service (aPaaS)."

In addition, Gartner noted the impact of artificial intelligence on IT spending: "Disruptive emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), will reshape business models as well as the economics of public- and private-sector enterprises. AI is having a major effect on IT spending, although its role is often misunderstood," said Lovelock. "AI is not a product, it is really a set of techniques or a computer engineering discipline. As such, AI is being embedded in many existing products and services, as well as being central to new development efforts in every industry."

Gartner has made a more detailed analysis available in a complimentary webinar here. The company's full quarterly IT spending forecast report is available to Gartner clients here.

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

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