Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 3% in 2022

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 3% from 2021, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. While IT spending is expected to grow in 2022, it will be at a much slower pace than 2021 due to spending cutbacks on PCs, tablets and printers by consumers, causing spending on devices to shrink 5%. IT spend in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region is forecast to total $173 billion in 2022, growing 1.2% from 2021.

“Inflation is top of mind for everyone. Central banks around the world are focusing on fighting inflation, with overall inflation rates expected to be reduced through the end of 2023. However, the current levels of volatility being seen in both inflation and currency exchange rates is not expected to deter CIOs’ investment plans for 2022,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. “Organizations that do not invest in the short term will likely fall behind in the medium term and risk not being around in the long term.”

Price increases and delivery uncertainty, exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have accelerated the transition in purchasing preference among CIOs, and enterprises in general, from ownership to service — pushing cloud spending to 18.4% growth in 2021 and expected growth of 22.1% in 2022. Not only is cloud service demand reshaping the IT services industry, but it is also driving spending on servers to 16.6% growth in 2022, as hyperscalers build out their data centers.

Spending on data center systems is forecast to experience the strongest growth of all segments in 2022 at 11.1%. Cloud consulting and implementation and cloud managed services are expected to grow 17.2% in 2022, from $217 billion in 2021 to $255 billion in 2022, helping to drive the overall IT services segment to 6.2% growth in 2022 (see Table 1).

Table 1. Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

2021 Spending 2021 Growth (%) 2022 Spending 2022 Growth (%) 2023 Spending 2023 Growth (%)

Data Center

Systems 191,001 6.4 212,218 11.1 221,590 4.4

Software 735,869 14.7 806,800 9.6 902,182 11.8

Devices 808,580 16.0 767,872 -5.0 790,888 3.0

IT Services 1,207,966 12.8 1,283,192 6.2 1,389,169 8.3

Communications

Services 1,458,527 3.8 1,464,551 0.4 1,505,733 2.8

Overall IT 4,401,944 10.2 4,534,632 3.0 4,809,561 6.1

Source: Gartner (July 2022)

In MENA, software will emerge as the highest growth segment in 2022, recording a 12.3% increase in spending from 2021 (see table 2). This will be followed by spending on IT services and data centers. Weak