Gartner has issued its latest quarterly global IT spending forecast showing a modest 1.90 per cent forecast NZ growth for 2016 over 2105. However when reported in $US there was a slight downturn.
The figure is broadly in line with global forecasts. Gartner said: “Worldwide IT spending is forecast to be flat in 2016, totalling $US3.41 trillion. This is up from last quarter's forecast of negative 0.5 per cent growth. The change in the forecast is mainly due to currency fluctuations.”
However the forecasts were compiled ahead of the UK’s decision to exit the European Union, and Gartner research vice president John-David Lovelock, said this would likely create an erosion in business confidence and price increases that would impact UK, Western Europe and worldwide IT spending.
“2016 marked the start of an amazing dichotomy,” Lovelock said. “The pace of change in IT will never again be as slow as it is now, but global IT spending growth is best described as lacklustre. 2016 is the year that business focus turns to digital business, the Internet of Things and even algorithmic business.
“To fund these new initiatives, many businesses are turning to cost optimisation efforts centring around the new digital alternatives (for example, SaaS instead of software licenses, voice over LTE [VoLTE] instead of cellular and digital personal assistants instead of people) to save money, simplify operations and speed time to value. It is precisely this new breadth of alternatives to traditional IT that will fundamentally reshape what is bought, who buys it and how much will be spent."
Gartner’s forecasts for New Zealand, in $NZm, were: devices $1647, down 2.8 per cent; data centre systems, $388, up 3.5 per cent; software $1422, up 8.7 per cent; IT services $3470, up 3.1 per cent; communications services $4331, up 0.5 per cent.