Worldwide IT spending growth is expected to grow 3.7 percent in 2012, a slowdown from the 6.9 percent growth in 2011, according to a new forecast from Gartner. The research firm lowered its 2012 forecast from its previous estimate of 4.6 percent due to global economic woes and theThailand floods which hit the hard disc drive industry.
The good news is that global IT spending is still enormous—an estimated 3.8 trillion dollars worldwide. This number includes computer hardware, enterprise software, IT services, telecom equipment, and telecom services.
Of those segments, the fastest growing will be telecom equipment (6.9 percent) and enterprise software (6.4 percent).
The enterprise software market alone is expected to be a $285 billion market and it is the smallest segment. Enterprise software is a huge market ripe for disruption. The software that runs companies is moving from data centers to the cloud, and this presents a huge opportunity for new startups to come in under entrenched players like SAP, IBM, and Oracle.
Here is Gartner’s breakdown of IT spending in 2012:
Table 1
Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)
| 2011Spending | 2011Growth (%) | 2012Spending | 2012Growth (%) | ||||||
| Computing Hardware | 404 | 7.6 | 424 | 5.1 | |||||
| Enterprise Software | 268 | 9.6 | 285 | 6.4 | |||||
| IT Services | 848 | 6.9 | 874 | 3.1 | |||||
| Telecom Equipment | 444 | 7.7 | 475 | 6.9 | |||||
| Telecom Services | 1,701 | 6.1 | 1,740 | 2.3 | |||||
| All IT | 3,664 | 6.9 | 3,798 | 3.7 | |||||