Without any doubt, the recent wave of new cases of Covid-19 by the Omicron variant has had a significant impact on our lives. Nevertheless, the same hasn’t occurred in the economic sphere, where growth forecasts have not only not stopped, but in some cases have even increased. This is the case of investments in information technology (IT), explained in a study published by Gartner. IT investment
Thus, in our weekly post on Befree, we want to explain in detail everything that this Gartner survey and analysis has to tell us. At the same time, we will try to give you an overview of IT investment in the years to come.
What are the Information Technologies?
Before we begin, it’s worth taking a look at the concept of IT and shedding some light on it. Information technology is the application of computers and telecommunications equipment to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate data. The main purpose of IT is the production of information for analysis and subsequent decision making based on the conclusions drawn therefrom.
The term IT is often confused with another similar concept: ICT -or Information and Communication Technologies. However, this is easily solved: IT encompasses the entire information domain, so that ICT is only a part of IT. ICT necessarily involves the communication of information, whereas IT refers to all upstream and downstream processes.
Evolution of IT investment
The Gartner study predicts IT investment in the next two years: 2022 and 2023. For the first one, Gartner assures that the total IT investment will be 4.5 trillion dollars, which would represent an increase of 5.1% compared to the investment made in the past year 2021. Undoubtedly, a clear sign of the global economic recovery after the hardest moments of the Covid-19 pandemic. For 2023, on the other hand, the forecast increase in IT investment is 5%, a practically identical figure.
The sample of data collected on IT investment is divided in the Gartner study into five types: communication services, IT services, devices, enterprise software and data center systems:
As can be seen in the graph, the highest IT investment will be in IT services and business software, with average growth of 8.5% and 11.5% respectively.
These increases offset the low growth in the other three types of IT investment: communication services, devices -which will even see their investment fall by 1.2% in 2023- and data center systems, with the lowest spending of all.
New paradigm in 2025
The Gartner study doesn't just stop at 2023. The consulting firm predicts that IT investment in the cloud in 2025 will double that of traditional environments. In 2020 cloud spending overtook that of traditional environments for the first time. However, such an astonishing breakthrough was not expected in such a short time. Thus, more than half of total IT spending will go toward building key cloud infrastructures.
Gartner research vice president Michael Warrilow said, "The shift to the cloud has accelerated over the past two years as the pandemic has taken hold and as organizations have responded to the new business and social dynamics generated." As a result, technology and service providers that fail to adapt to this pace "face an ever-increasing risk of becoming obsolete," Warrilow said.
