Forrester: Global IT Pushed to $2.06 Trillion in 2013

Global IT will reach $2.06 trillion this year, according to Forrester Research; this is due to software and applications driving growth.

It is estimated that there will be an increase of 2.3 percent in government and tech spending, and this is similar to Gartner's findings which show a 2 percent increase in the worldwide growth forecast. The findings from Gartner earlier this month show a $3.7 trillion prediction dollar-wise, which is much higher than Forrester's $2.06 trillion.

Ranvest Associates is an Orangevale, California-based solution provider, and the CEO at that company, Bob Nitrio, stated that he was surprised by the gap, and did not know how the research was conducted.

Nitrio said: "That's a pretty big discrepancy [in dollars]. Obviously, one of them is going to be wrong by a large amount."

Forrester's analysis shows that software will account for $542 billion, the largest portion within spending on IT products and services, and this will be propelled by application spending, which is expected to reach around $234.6 billion.

Cumulus Global is a Westborough, Massachusetts-based solution provider, and the CEO of that company, Allen Falcon, stated that he has witnessed a change in how companies invest in IT.

Falcon said: "We see companies more willing to spend, but they're really focused on the business value of what they're spending their money on. Companies that put projects on hold are bringing those projects back to life, but they want those solutions to be less expensive and more in line with their business operations than past IT spending."

Nitrio added that an impact is also being created by the fact that technology products now have a longer life cycle. He said: "Quality of the hardware is so much greater than it was in years past. I think that the product life cycle is a part of that [shift]. I could see where software applications would take a larger share of the spend."

The vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, Andrew Bartels, expects there to be a larger growth in software than the overall IT spending market this year; it is anticipated that there will be a 3.3 percent growth in U.S. dollars with respect to this.

Bartels commented: "Software, especially for analytical and collaborative applications and for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products, continue to be a bright spot."

Falcon added that there has been a big shift toward SaaS as companies move from traditionally hardware-centric services to cloud-based applications. He noted: "Whereas a year ago we were moving a lot of organizations to Google apps, replacing the in-house mail server, we are now doing much more leveraging of Google apps and Google mail - not just for mail servers, but file servers as well. By replacing in-house file servers, we're able to eliminate the need for virtual private network infrastructure. (CY) Link