With two-thirds of the world’s GDP enabled through technology, it’s no surprise that we’ve seen—and will continue to see—tremendous growth in the IT and IT services markets. (1)
Gartner forecasts worldwide IT spending to surpass $4 trillion in 2022, reaching $4.5 trillion by 2023 (2) , and the IT Services market is expected to grow at a rate of 11% per year to reach $5.73 trillion in 2025. (3)
There’s no lack of IT-related projects available to choose from. One or more can come together to modernize an organization to prepare for a future where nearly everything will be tech-enabled. CIOs embrace this reality and expect their IT budgets to grow 3.6% compared to 2021, the fastest growth rate in more than a decade. (4)
To bring focus to the potential investments, Gartner offers that CIOs and IT executives should lead anywhere…by ensuring enterprise and talent readiness, nurturing connections to ensure ecosystem readiness, and reaching beyond by using technology and social readiness. (5) From a project and technical perspective, it’s worth looking at trends to paint a picture for the future.
For example, in 2020, within the enterprise application software market, the cloud market became more prominent than the non-cloud market for the first time. This was due, in part, to the coronavirus pandemic—Gartner projects the cloud market to double the size of the non-cloud market by 2025. The cloud is now responsible for nearly all 11% spending growth within the enterprise software segment. Organizations are focusing on upgrading their software stack to software-as-a-service (SaaS) to support continued flexibility and agility. (6)
Cyber and information security also remain at the top of the list of planned investments for 2022. 66% of organizations plan to increase investments in security. Business intelligence/data analytics (51%) and cloud platforms (48%) are the following top spending priorities. (7)
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) top the list of technologies planned for implementation—with 48% of technology executives having already deployed or planning to deploy AI and ML during 2022. The distributed cloud (44%) follows. (8)
As budgets are being allocated, CIOs have an opportunity to bring their organization to the next level, modernizing the infrastructure and preparing for what the future will hold.
Citations:
1 – “IDC FutureScape 2021,” IDC, Accessed on January 27, 2021
2 – “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Exceed $4 Trillion in 2022,” Gartner, October 2021
3 – “Companies In The IT Services Industry Introduce Multi-Cloud Solutions, Helping Growth Rate Reach 11% As Per The Business Research Company’s IT Services Global Market Report 2022,” The Business Research Company, January 2022
4, 6 – “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 5.1% in 2022,” Gartner, January 2022
5 – “Gartner Identifies Three Key Focus Areas for CIOs to Drive Value,” Gartner, October 2021
7 – “Gartner Survey of Over 2,000 CIOs Reveals the Need for Enterprises to Embrace Business Composability in 2022,” Gartner, October 2021
8 – “IT Budgets Are Growing. Here’s Where the Money’s Going,” Gartner, October 2021