Global IT spending set to exceed pre-pandemic levels in 2022

Gartner’s latest forecast reveals an uptick in consulting and managed IT services

Trade

Image: Shutterstock/Dennis

20 January 2022

Global IT spending will reach $4.5 trillion in 2022, representing a 5.1% increase over 2021 and exceeding pre-pandemic levels, according to Gartner.

At $1.3 trillion, consulting and managed services will have the second-highest spending growth in 2022, up from 7.9% in 2021. Additionally, business and technology consulting expenditures are slated to increase by 10% in 2022.

In spite of the dangers posed by the Omicron variant, digital market prosperity and economic recovery will boost investments in technology, according to Gartner.

“2022 is the year that the future returns for the CIO,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.

“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. Simultaneously, 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.”

By 2025, Gartner predicts that more organisations will turn to external consultants to help bridge the gap between digital business ambitions and existing IT capabilities. The cloud market is a case in point.

For the first time in 2020, the cloud market in enterprise application software overtook the non-cloud market, partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

As organisations shift to software-as-a-service (SaaS) to maintain flexibility and agility, the cloud will account for the vast majority of the 11% growth in enterprise software spending in 2022.

Furthermore, Gartner estimates that the cloud market will be twice as large as the non-cloud market by 2025.

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