Worldwide IT Spending Ticks Up

chart and graph icons on a digital screen interface and a businessman in background

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].

Featured

  • student reading a book with a brain, a protective hand, a computer monitor showing education icons, gears, and leaves

    4 Steps to Responsible AI Implementation

    Researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Innovation, Design & Digital Learning (CIDDL) have published a new framework for the responsible implementation of artificial intelligence at all levels of education.

  • glowing digital brain interacts with an open book, with stacks of books beside it

    Federal Court Rules AI Training with Copyrighted Books Fair Use

    A federal judge ruled this week that artificial intelligence company Anthropic did not violate copyright law when it used copyrighted books to train its Claude chatbot without author consent, but ordered the company to face trial on allegations it used pirated versions of the books.

  • server racks, a human head with a microchip, data pipes, cloud storage, and analytical symbols

    OpenAI, Oracle Expand AI Infrastructure Partnership

    OpenAI and Oracle have announced they will develop an additional 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity, expanding their artificial intelligence infrastructure partnership as part of the Stargate Project, a joint venture among OpenAI, Oracle, and Japan's SoftBank Group that aims to deploy 10 gigawatts of computing capacity over four years.

  • laptop displaying a phishing email icon inside a browser window on the screen

    Phishing Campaign Targets ED Grant Portal

    Threat researchers at cybersecurity company BforeAI have identified a phishing campaign spoofing the U.S. Department of Education's G5 grant management portal.