Worldwide Enterprise IT Spending To Total $2.7 Trillion In 2012 But Growth Is Slowing

Gartner just released its worldwide enterprise IT spending estimates, which are projected to total $2.7 trillion in 2012. That’s a 3.9 percent increase from 2011 expected spending of $2.6 trillion, but down from a 5.9 percent expected increase in 2011.

Gartner says this year alone, 350 companies will each invest more than $1 billion in IT. And at the forefront of IT spending are applications in the cloud, social, data warehousing and mobility areas. Gartner says that $74 billion was spent on public cloud services in 2010, which only represented 3 percent of enterprise spending. But, the firm says that public cloud services will grow five times faster than overall IT enterprise spending (19 percent annually through 2015).

By 2014, Gartner says that private app stores will be deployed by 60 percent of IT organizations. And in August, Gartner reported that social customer relationship management (CRM) market is forecast to reach over $1 billion in revenue by year-end 2012, up from approximately $625 million in 2010.

The firm also said that despite the global economic challenges, enterprises will continue to invest in IT, although the rate of spending may slow.