Gartner sees IT spend increase

Beancounters at Gartner have forecast IT spending in EMEA to total $1.3 trillion in 2022, up 4.7 percent from 2021.

The 2022 growth rate will be slower than in 2021, when EMEA IT spending is expected to grow 6.3 percent, the Big G said.

The analyst said the biggest change be IT financing.

Gartner research VP, John Lovelock said: “IT is transitioning from supporting the business to being the business — which means spending on technology shifts from a cost of operations (selling, general and administrative [SGA]) to a cost of revenue (COR), or possibly cost of goods sold (COGS). CIOs have a balancing act to perform, saving cash and expanding revenue.” COGS. Hmm.

In the UK, IT spending will reach $223.3 billion in 2022, a rise of six percent from this year.

This is higher than the projected 4.7 percent growth for total EMEA IT spending in 2022.

Lovelock added: “Organisations in the UK are on pace to increase their IT spending by $14.4 billion in 2022, which is more than France, Germany, Italy and Turkey combined.

“Remote work, remote education and telehealth are bolstering IT spending in government, education and healthcare which are among the top growth industries in the UK.”

IT spending in Germany is on pace to reach $167.3 billion in 2022, a 4.4 percent increase from 2021.

Enterprise software spending is forecast to be the segment with the highest growth in 2022.

German organisations will focus their spending on devices to respond to remote working and distance education by the end of 2021.

Devices spending is expected to climb 18 percent in this year and will remain high, reaching $24.2 billion in 2022.

Enterprise software spending is estimated to have the highest growth in 2022, driven by the rise in cloud spending.

“Since the start of the pandemic, cloud delivery has demonstrated elasticity and flexibility. It scaled up when needed and scaled down when required”, Lovelock said.

Gartner analysts estimate enterprise cloud spending will represent 12.5 percent of total enterprise IT spending in 2022.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and desktop as a service (DaaS) are expected to be the two segments where EMEA organisations will up their spending the most in 2022, with 32.3 percent and 31.1 percent growth, respectively.

After double-digit growth in device spending in 2021, expenditure is anticipated to slow in 2022, with the segment growing 0.7 percent year on year.