With an increase of 5.1% from 2021, global IT spending is expected to reach $4.5 trillion in 2022, according to the latest study by Gartner.
Economic recovery with high expectations for digital market prosperity will continue to boost technology investments, despite the impacts of the Omicron variant.
“2022 is the year that the future returns for the CIO,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president, 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.”
Gartner forecasts that the IT services segment, which includes consulting and managed services, is expected to have the second highest spending growth in 2022. It is poised to reach $1.3 trillion, up 7.9% from 2021. Business and technology consulting spending, specifically, is expected to grow 10% in 2022.
The research firm also predicts that by 2025, organisations will increase their reliance on external consultants, as the greater urgency and accelerated pace of change widen the gap between organisations’ digital business ambitions and their internal resources and capabilities.
“This will be particularly poignant with cloud as it serves as a key element in achieving digital ambitions and supporting hybrid work,” said Lovelock.
He added that Gartner expects the vast majority of large organisations to use external consultants to develop their cloud strategy over the next few years.
The cloud is responsible for nearly all of the 11% spending growth within the enterprise software segment in 2022 as organisations focus on upgrading their software stack to software-as-a-service (SaaS) to support continued flexibility and agility. In 2020, within the enterprise application software market, the cloud market became larger than non-cloud market for the first time, due in part to the coronavirus pandemic.
