Gartner Raises Global IT Spending Forecast for 2011
Things aren't as interconnected as Gartner feared.
To mark the start of the second half of 2011, the Stamford, Conn.-based IT analyst firm updated its 2011 IT spending forecast yesterday. Rather than slowing down since the Great East Japan Earthquake in March, IT spending is poised for an even stronger growth year in 2011 than it appeared to be when Gartner issued a start-of-the-year forecast on Jan. 6.
"It is a bit surprising that we have not seen a more significant impact on our global IT spending forecast as a result of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, but despite widespread concerns about disruptions to the supply of critical components in the initial aftermath of the natural disaster, there has not been a dramatic impact on overall IT spending," said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement.
Gartner's new worldwide IT spending forecast for all of 2011 is 7.1 percent growth to $3.67 billion. That's up from the 5.6 percent growth the market research firm expected back in January.
For the channel, the outlook appears slightly better for the services component of IT spending than it did at the start of the year, as well. Gartner lifted its services growth forecast by two percentage points to 6.6 percent. The strongest growth is expected in computing hardware (11.7 percent) and enterprise software (9.5 percent).
In the news release announcing the IT spending forecast in January, Gartner didn't mention public cloud services. But the June 30 update calls for 20 percent growth in worldwide public cloud services spending to $89 billion in 2011 from $74 billion last year. By 2015, Gartner forecasts public cloud services will total $177 billion.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 01, 2011