Worldwide IT spending to shoot past $3.6 trillion this year

(Credit: Gartner)

Organizations around the world will collectively spend more than $3.6 trillion on IT products and services, Gartner said today.

That sounds like a healthy chunk of change, but it marks only a 3 percent increase from last year when spending totaled around $3.5 trillion. Still, Gartner's latest forecast is a bit more optimistic than the 2.5 percent rise it projected last quarter.

"While the challenges facing global economic growth persist -- the eurozone crisis, weaker U.S. recovery, a slowdown in China -- the outlook has at least stabilized," Richard Gordon, a research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement. "There has been little change in either business confidence or consumer sentiment in the past quarter, so the short-term outlook is for continued caution in IT spending."

In the face of a sluggish year, the the cloud may be one of the few bright spots, according to Gartner. Companies are expected to shell out around $109 billion on cloud services this year, up from $91 billion last year. Spending on the cloud could reach as high as $207 billion by 2016.

As the largest market for IT spending, telecommunications is also due for a promising year.

Enterprises will spend around 377 billion on telecom equipment and $1.7 trillion on telecom services, Gartner noted. The growth is expected to come from new network connections set up in emerging markets and more connected mob... [Read more]