Worldwide enterprise IT spending forecast to grow

Worldwide enterprise IT spending is forecast to total $2.679 trillion in 2013.

According to Gartner this is a 2.5 percent increase of projected 2012 spending of $2.603 trillion. Banking, communications, media and services (CMS) and manufacturing are predicted by the analyst house to bring in the most growth through to 2016, it added.

The company said 2012 had suffered at the hands of the economic crisis, but if the US and Europe continued to fight through this in the upcoming years, the IT spending sector will be back on its feet again.

The manufacturing and natural resources sector will lead the vertical markets with total spending expected to reach $478 billion in 2013, up 2.3 percent from $467 billion in 2012.

According to Gartner, manufacturers typically plan and manage a significant portion of their IT costs in expectation of changes in their sales. It added that manufacturers worldwide had also been steadily reducing their IT purchases as a percentage of their sales since the recession of 2008.

Gartner said that although the manufacturing industry’s IT buying centre had adopted tighter IT cost controls  IT spending rates are expected to bottom out in 2013 and will be resilient over the long run, as business confidence.

The banking and securities sector will have strong growth in 2013 and is expected to reach $460 billion in 2013, up 3.5 percent from $445 billion in 2012. Banking and securities was claimed by Gartner to be an IT-intensive industry, spending approximately three times as much on IT as a percentage of revenue than the average of all industries.

The company said this trend was expected to continue due to a significant amount of IT required to run activities such as lending, payments, trading and risk management.

The CMS sector is forecast to grow three percent in 2013 to $426 billion, up from $414 billion in 2012. Gartner predicted businesses in this sector would spend approximately five percent of their revenue on IT on average over a five-year period, well above the median for all industries.

In the short term, transportation and insurance will also be high-growth sectors with both reaching more than four percent growth in 2013.

IT spending in the transportation sector is expected to total $126 billion in 2013, up from $121 billion in 2012. IT spending in insurance will reach $187 billion in 2013, up from $179 billion in 2012.

However, as a result of austerity measures and budgeting, the 2012 government IT spending is forecast to decline two percent. That decline is expected to continue through 2013. In 2013, government IT spending is forecast to total $445 billion, down from $447 billion in 2012.