Gartner: Global IT spending to grow marginally in 2017

According to the latest forecasts from Gartner, while the forecast of global IT spending was down by 2.7% from the previous quarter, it is expected to grow by 1.4% in 2017, reaching a value of $3.5tn.
 
John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, said: "The strong U.S. dollar has cut $67 billion out of our 2017 IT spending forecast.
 
"We expect these currency headwinds to be a drag on earnings of U.S.-based multinational IT vendors through 2017."
 
Additional forecasts from Gartner show that the global IT services market may grow by 2.3%in 2017, a decline from the 3.6% growth reported in 2016. Part of this change is attributed to adjustments to particular geographies as a result of anticipation of changes in US policy, both on the home front and foreign. From Gartner's standpoint, the policies of the new US administration is seen as business-friendly and is expected to have a positive impact on the US's implementation service market .
 
Elsewhere, the data centre system segment is also projected to grow by 0.3% in 2017.
 
"Enterprises are moving away from buying servers from the traditional vendors and instead renting server power in the cloud from companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. This has created a reduction in spending on servers which is impacting the overall data centre system segment," explained Lovelock.

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