The analyst company Gartner has issued a new forecast predicting that worldwide IT spending will reach $5.26 trillion in 2024, up 7.5% from 2023. While this sounds like good news, the increase is actually a downgrade from last quarter"s forecast, which predicted an 8% growth.
In its breakdown of spending, Gartner looked at the following categories: Data Center Systems, Devices, Software, IT Services, Communications Services, and Overall IT. Of these, Communications Services will have the most sluggish growth in 2024 at just 3.0%, while Data Center Systems and Software record the best growth of 24.1% and 12.6%.
The growth in those latter two categories is largely due to the AI boom. Gartner said that the computing power needed by AI is pushing companies in that sector to expand their data centers. For example, in recent months, Amazon has announced massive AWS investments in Spain and Germany, and it"s a similar story with Microsoft and Oracle, too.
In addition to data center spending, companies in all sectors are paying companies like OpenAI and Amazon to use their APIs to have intelligent AI chatbots running on their websites and platforms. Gartner said for companies, though, that this spending is likely to feel more like a tax on companies.
The full breakdown of spending by sector is as follows:
| 2023 Spending | 2023 Growth (%) | 2024 Spending | 2024 Growth (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data Center Systems | 236,098 | 4.0 | 293,091 | 24.1 |
| Devices | 692,784 | -6.5 | 730,125 | 5.4 |
| Software | 974,089 | 11.5 | 1,096,913 | 12.6 |
| IT Services | 1,503,698 | 4.9 | 1,609,846 | 7.1 |
| Communications Services | 1,491,733 | 3.2 | 1,537,188 | 3.0 |
| Overall IT | 4,898,401 | 3.8 | 5,267,163 | 7.5 |
Regarding the IT services spending, Gartner said that is expected to grow 7.1% in 2024, however, this is down from 9.7% in the last forecast. It said this was due in part to slower spending across subsegments like consulting and business process services.
Source: Gartner - Image via Depositphotos.com