IT spending holds up despite Japan disasters

Gartner has increased its forecast for global IT spending growth in 2011 by 1.5% after seeing little impact on spending and component supplies from natural disasters in Japan during the first half to date.

The firm claims the overall market is on-track to generate sales of $846 billion (€584 billion) in 2011, up 6.6% on 2010, with a recovery in Japanese sales during 2H mitigating falls in spending following an earthquake and tsunami in March. Computing hardware will top the growth chart with spending likely to grow 11.7% through the year, followed by enterprise software, IT services and telecoms.

"It is a bit surprising that we have not seen a more significant impact on our global IT spending forecast as a result of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, but despite widespread concerns about disruptions to the supply of critical components in the initial aftermath of the natural disaster, there has not been a dramatic impact on overall IT spending," Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner notes.

While the overall IT market is in good shape, the research firm notes that spending on public cloud infrastructure will grow four times faster than the broader market, hitting $89 billion in 2011. “The emergence and adoption of cloud is an important trend, and in some markets it’s already a significant factor,” Gordon states.

However, the firm notes that cloud spending is starting at a lower point than overall spending – it accounted for 2% of overall IT spend in 2010 –, and will account for only 5% of total outlay by 2015.