Gartner: Future IT spend 'timid and lacklustre'
Gartner has gazed into its crystal ball and predicted that worldwide enterprise IT spending will reach $US2.5 trillion in 2011, a 3.1% increase from 2010.
This year’s IT spend is expected to tally up to an impressive $US2.4 trillion, a 2.4% increase from 2009.
Interestingly Gartner says that, over the next five years, enterprise IT spending will represent a period of “timid and at times lacklustre growth” with spending totalling $US2.8 trillion in 2014.
Peter Sondergaard, Senior VP at Gartner, explained, “Several key vertical industries, such as manufacturing and financial services will not see IT budgets recover to pre-2008 levels before 2012 or 2013. Emerging economies continue to be the locomotive of enterprise IT spending, substantially outpacing developed economies.”
Four trends are tipped to support change in IT and in the economy over the next 10 years.
- Cloud
- Business impact of social computing
- Context Aware Computing
- Pattern Based Strategy
The impact of social computing isn’t about more platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. Gartner says its impact will come from the culture and attitudes which shape social computing.
“The rigid business processes which dominate enterprise organisational architectures today are well suited for routine, predictable business activities. But they are poorly suited to support people whose jobs require discovery, interpretation, negotiation and complex decision-making,” said Sondergaard.
“Social computing, not Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, but the technologies and principals behind them will be implemented across and between all organisations, will unleash yet to be realised productivity growth, it will contribute to economic growth.”
