Worldwide IT spending is projected to reach $3.8 trillion in 2013, according to a new Gartner report, a 4.1 percent increase from 2012.
Despite uncertainty, driven in part by government indecision in the U.S. and economic upheaval in Europe, Gartner predicts strategic IT initiatives will continue this year. What Gartner calls the “Nexus of Forces” – social, mobile, cloud and information – is reshaping spending patterns, according to the report.
"There are clear winners and losers over the next three to five years, as we see more of a transition from PCs to mobile phones, from servers to storage, from licensed software to cloud, or the shift in voice and data connections from fixed to mobile,” said John Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.
Devices spending, including personal computers, tablets, mobile phones and printers, is forecast to reach $718 billion in 2013, up 7.9 percent from 2012. The growth in this category is mainly driven by spending on premium mobile phones.
Worldwide enterprise software spending is forecast to total $297 billion in 2013, a 6.4 percent increase from 2012.
Distributors have plans to invest in technology in 2013. In MDM’s annual reader survey, respondents listed e-commerce, CRM, mobile for sales and cloud computing as top investment areas.
The top 3 distribution technology trends in 2013 include e-commerce investment, moves with mobile and analytics’ taking center stage as a sales and marketing vehicle.
For distributors serving the data center market, the outlook for 2013 for data center systems spending is forecast to grow 3.7 percent in 2013, down 0.7 percent from Gartner's previous forecast. This reduction is largely due to cuts to the near-term forecast for spending on external storage and the enterprise in the economically troubled EMEA region.
