High expectations for digital market prosperity will drive technology investments despite potential impacts of the Ômicron variant of the coronavirus
According to the most recent survey by the Gartner, Inc., the world leader in research and advice for businesses, worldwide IT spending is expected to total US$ 4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 5.1% from 2021.
Despite the potential impacts of the coronavirus with the Ômicron variant, high expectations around economic recovery and expansion in the digital market will continue to drive technology investments.
“2022 is the year the future returns to the CIO,” says John-David Lovelock, Vice President of Research at Gartner. “IT directors are now in a position to move beyond critical short-term projects, like the ones they've managed in the last two years, to focus on longer-term actions. Simultaneously, staff skills gaps, salary inflation and the war for talent will drive IT leaders to rely more on consultancies and managed services companies to pursue their digital strategies.”
Gartner predicts that the IT services segment – which includes consulting and managed services – is expected to have the second highest growth in spend in 2022, reaching US$ 1.3 trillion, which represents an increase of 7.9% over 2021 Spending on business and technology consulting, specifically, is expected to grow by 10% in 2022.
By 2025, organizations will increase their reliance on outside consultants, as heightened urgency and rapid pace of change widen the gap between organizations' digital business ambitions and their internal resources and capabilities, analysts assess.
“This will be particularly visible with the Cloud as it serves as a key element in achieving digital ambitions and supporting hybrid work,” notes Lovelock. “Gartner expects the vast majority of large organizations to use external consultants to develop their Cloud strategy in the coming years.”
In 2020, for the first time the software market enterprise cloud applications was larger than the non-Cloud market for the first time, due in part to the coronavirus pandemic. By 2025, Gartner expects it to be twice the size of the market outside the Cloud universe. Cloud Computing accounts for nearly all of the 11% spend growth in the enterprise software segment in 2022, with organizations focusing on upgrading their application framework to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, looking for more support. to ongoing flexibility and agility.
