IT Market To Hit $4.5 Trillion In 2022 As Services Surge: Gartner
Global IT spending is expected to increase 5 percent in 2020 with the managed and consultancy services market flourishing to $1.28 trillion.
Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide IT spending is expected to reach nearly $4.5 trillion in 2022 as organizations of all sizes are ready to move beyond short-term projects that were needed to combat the global pandemic, according to new data from IT research firm Gartner.
One key trend is that the managed and consultancy IT services market will surge nearly 8 percent annually to $1.28 trillion in 2022 as businesses increase their reliance on external consultants, such as channel partners, especially for their cloud strategies.
John-David Lovelock, a distinguished research vice president at Gartner, said the cloud is serving as a “key element” for businesses looking to achieve digital transformation and support the new remote workforce.
“Gartner expects the vast majority of large organizations to use external consultants to develop their cloud strategy over the next few years,” said Lovelock in a statement. “Staff skills gaps, wage inflation and the war for talent will push CIOs to rely more on consultancies and managed service firms to pursue their digital strategies.”
[Related: Dell Overthrows HP As PC Market Share Leader In US: Gartner]
On a global basis, Gartner estimates that IT spending will reach $4.45 trillion in 2022, representing an increase of 5.1 percent compared with 2021.
The increase stems from 2022 being the year that “the future returns for the CIO,” said Gartner’s Lovelock. “They are now in a position to move beyond the critical, short-term projects over the past two years and focus on the long term,” he said.
Enterprise Software Spending To Climb 11 Percent
Breaking down Gartner’s new data, the largest increase on IT spending this year will be around enterprise software. Enterprise software spending is projected to grow 11 percent to $672 billion this year, up from $605 billion in 2021.
Within the enterprise application software market, the cloud market became larger than the non-cloud market for the first time in 2020, stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. By 2025, Gartner expects it to be double the size of the non-cloud market.
Cloud is responsible for nearly all of the 11 percent spending growth within enterprise software in 2022 as organizations focus on upgrading their software stack to Software as a Service to support continued flexibility and agility.
Rest Of The Market
The largest IT spending market in 2022 will be in communications services, expected to reach $1.46 trillion, up just 1.3 percent compared with 2021.
The second largest market will be IT services at $1.28 trillion, up 7.9 percent year over year. The third largest market based on Gartner’s IT spending forecast will be IT devices, which is expected to increase 3.3 percent annually to $814 billion, followed by enterprise software at $672 billion.
Data center systems round up the list of the top five largest IT spending markets in 2022 at $226 billion, representing annual growth of 4.7 percent.
Gartner’s IT spending methodology relies on analysis of sales by thousands of vendors across the entire range of IT products and services. Gartner uses primary research techniques, complemented by secondary research sources, to build a database of market size data on which to base its forecast.