Gartner bullish on IT spending in 2010

Analyst firm expects strong growth as industry continues to recover.

Worldwide IT spending will increase 5.3 percent year on year to reach US$3.4 trillion ($3.67 trillion) in 2010 as the industry continues to haul itself out of recession, according to the latest predictions from Gartner.

The figures mark an increase on the analyst firm's predictions last quarter, which forecasted year-on-year growth of 4.6 percent.

Richard Gordon, a research vice president at Gartner, explained that the projected increase was the result of significant growth in hardware sales, particularly on the consumer side where mobile PCs had driven sales.

"Although consumer spending will outstrip enterprise spending in 2010, we expect to see improvement in the enterprise space as the economy continues to improve incrementally," he said.

"We are seeing the release of some pent-up demand for replacement hardware in enterprises, but there remains caution among large organisations as they are still constrained by budgets imposed from chief financial and information officers."

Gartner has projected hardware sales to hit US$353 billion ($381 billion) over the year, an increase of 5.7 percent.

The research also looked at software, IT services and telecoms, and Gartner said that each area is expected to grow by more than five per cent in 2010.

Virtualisation, security, data integration and business intelligence tools will all grow through to 2014, while web conferencing, team collaboration and enterprise content management systems will all see double-digit growth.

Gartner expects the growth to continue to 2011 and hit US$3.5 trillion (A$3.78 trillion), marking a 4.2 percent increase on 2010.