Worldwide IT spending is projected to total US$4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 5.5% from 2021, as enterprises start to turn to self-built technologies and software versus buying and implementing them form vendors.

According to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc., enterprise software is expected to have the highest growth in 2022 at 11.5%, driven by infrastructure software spending continuing to outpace application software spending.

Data centre systems spending is set to growth 5.8% in 2022 to $207.44 million, more than the $196.14 million forecasted to be spent by December 31, 2021. However, growth next year is set to be slower versus the 9.7% growth this year of 9.7% on 2020’s values.

Communications services, the largest spending share, are forecasted to top $1.48 billion in 2022, up 2.1% on 2021 which between January and December is expected to have generated $1.45 billion.

Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

Global spending growth on devices reached a peak in 2021 (15.1%) as remote work, telehealth and remote learning took hold, but Gartner analysts said they expect 2022 to still show an uptick in enterprises that upgrade devices and/or invest in multiple devices to thrive in a hybrid work setting. 

John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president at Gartner, said: “Digital tech initiatives remain a top strategic business priority for companies as they continue to reinvent the future of work, focusing spending on making their infrastructure bulletproof and accommodating increasingly complex hybrid work for employees going into 2022.

“What changed in 2020 and 2021 was not really the technology itself, but people’s willingness and eagerness to adopt it and use it in different ways.

“In 2022, CIOs need to reconfigure how work is done by embracing business composability and the technologies that accommodate asynchronous workflows.”