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Gartner predicts that worldwide IT spending will increase 5.1 percent year-over-year to $4.6 trillion in 2023.

Gartner issued its forecast in conjunction with the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo event on Wednesday. The research organization claims the predicted growth in IT spending will be fueled by increased investments in software, datacenter equipment and technical services.

Gartner research vice president John-David Lovelock said that enterprise IT expenditure is recession-proof because CEOs and CFOs are, in general, increasing investments in IT despite macroeconomic circumstances.

Although he agrees that economic volatility affects spending in some technology sectors, Lovelock does not expect the circumstances to substantially influence spending overall.

What the numbers say

Gartner predicts that global software investment, encompassing cloud applications, will hit $790.4 billion by the end of this year, an 8 percent increase over 2021. In 2023, software spending is expected to increase by 11.3 percent to $879.7 billion.

Per the Gartner report, enterprise expenditures on datacenter infrastructure will also increase next year, although the market’s growth pace is expected to slow down.

The research group expects datacenter system investments to exceed $209.2 billion in 2022, a 10.4 percent increase over 2021. The rise, however, totals a mere 3.4 percent when compared to 2019.

Amazon Web Services keeps growing

Datacenter expenditure is slowing as businesses continue to expand their public cloud usage. Last quarter, Amazon Web Services boosted its sales to $16.1 billion, a 39 percent year-over-year increase owing to robust demand.

The cloud computing giant’s operating profit increased 38 percent to $3.5 billion. According to Gartner, global spending on communications services will drop 1.7 percent this year but rise 2.4 percent in 2023 ($1.46 trillion).

The market for IT services, such as application development and support, is expected to rise by 4.2 percent to $1.25 trillion by the end of 2022. According to Gartner, that figure will increase to $1.35 trillion in 2023, indicating 7.9 percent year-over-year growth.

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