Gartner: IT Spending to Grow Over 5 Percent in 2010

Posted 04/13/2010 at 5:14am | by Paul Lilly

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Market research firm Gartner believes that IT spending will continue to trend upwards this year and is projected to reach $3.4 trillion worldwide. That would represent a 5.3 increase over 2009, though Gartner was quick to point out that a dollar today isn't worth what it was yesterday.

"Following strong fourth quarter sales, an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010, combined with continued improvement in the global economy, sets up 2010 for solid IT spending growth," said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. "However, it's important to note that nearly 4pp of this growth will be the result of a projected decline in the value of the dollar relative to last year. IT spending in exchange-rate-adjusted dollars will still grow 1.6% this year, after declining 1.4% in 2009."

Much of the growth will come from the infrastructure market, including software to build, run, and manage an enterprise. On the hardware side, Gartner predicts spending to reach $353 billion in 2010, a 5.7 increase from 2009.

"Computing hardware suffered the steepest spending decline of the four major IT spending category segments in 2009. However, it is now forecast to enjoy the joint strongest rebound in 2010," said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner.