Report: IT spending to increase by 3.8 percent to $1.5 trillion worldwide

Thursday, June 03, 2010

According to a recent report from IDC, a global market intelligence firm, worldwide IT spending will increase during 2010 and will slowly return to figures seen before the recession, eWeek reports. IDC predicts a 3.8 percent spending increase for technology departments, bringing the total amount to $1.47 trillion worldwide.

Hardware vendors will benefit the most from the higher spending, with a reported 6.4 percent jump in sales. Software vendors will also prosper with a 3.1 percent increase, followed by service vendors that will experience a 1.5 percent rise.

IDC attributes the expected increase to a rise in business confidence, with the recession appearing to be a thing of the past.

"[The anticipated increase] reflects very real pent-up demand for infrastructure spending, including investment in solutions such as virtualization and information management," said IDC analyst Stephen Minton, eWeek relays. "Just as capital spending on hardware is the first thing to fall in a recession, it’s also the first thing to come back up for air when the IT budgets are surfacing above water."

Companies looking to spend efficiently on technology have been turning to outsourcing IT responsibilities. With managed networks, companies are able to fix costs for certain technology areas and allow outside experts to oversee responsibilities that were once time-consuming and troublesome. Relying on third-party firms allows IT executives to harness their energies on other areas that need attention.

As Minton stated, virtualization has become a solution for many companies. A recent poll of 150 IT managers found that 59 percent had begun to employ a virtual server in their office.