Worldwide IT spending is projected to drop significantly in 2020, with all market segments experiencing a decline, says Gartner, an IT research and advisory firm. But there are some exclusions.
You may also like: Telemedicine Post COVID-19
According to Gartner’s latest projection, global IT spending will decline by 8% in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, totalling €3.1 trillion ($3.4 trillion). In January, this number was expected to reach €3.6 trillion ($3.9 trillion), a 3.4% increase from 2019.
While expenditure in all segments will decrease in 2020, devices and data-centre
systems are forecast to see the largest drops in spending (-15.5% and -9.7%,
respectively).
“CIOs have moved into emergency cost optimisation which means that
investments will be minimised and prioritised on operations that keep the
business running, which will be the top priority for most organisations through
2020,” Gartner’s distinguished research vice president John-David Lovelock said
in the study. He continued with a warning that recovery patterns would have to adjust
and “a change in mindset” would be required for most organisations.
The remote work will, however, grow, which will cause growth in subsegments,
eg spending for public cloud services (which falls into multiple categories) is
projected to increase by 19% this year, cloud-based telephony and messaging by
8.9% and cloud-based conferencing by 24.3%. In other words, Gartner’s
projections on the overall cloud spending levels for 2023 and 2024 may realise
as early as 2022, according to Mr Lovelock.
In a separate survey
conducted in early May among chief financial officers (CFOs), Gartner found out
that while CFOs are generally preparing to optimise their costs through structural
cuts, spending will increase for specific technologies. Thus, 24% anticipate
more spending on robotic process automation (RPA), 20% on cloud-based enterprise resource
planning (ERP) technologies, and 19% on advanced analytics.
Speaking to NetworkWorld,
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins pinpointed some technology areas that continue to
attract investment. One of them is telehealth, which has seen explosive growth
since the beginning of the pandemic, and medical organisations will keep
investing in more solid infrastructure development. Another is enhancement of cyber
research infrastructure by the pharmaceutical firms and drug manufacturers.
Source: NetworkWorld
Image credit: Tony
Studio via iStock
