Global IT spend to reach $3.8-tr in 2019: Gartner

Despite uncertainties like the fate of Brexit and fears of recession, the global IT spending will increase by 3.2 per cent to USD 3.76 trillion in 2019, consultancy firm Gartner said Monday. The Indian IT sector, which includes companies such as TCS, Wipro and Infosys, depends almost exclusively on global spends. The over USD 150-billion sector supports over 4 million jobs directly.

"Despite uncertainty fuelled by recession rumours, Brexit, and trade wars and tariffs, the likely scenario for IT spending in 2019 is growth," John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, said. However, there are a lot of dynamic changes happening in regards to which segments will be driving growth in the future, he added.

The spending is moving from saturated segments such as mobile phones, PCs and on-premises data center infrastructure to cloud services and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the firm said. IoT is starting to pick up the slack from devices, it said, adding, "where the devices segment is saturated, IoT is not".

Among the categories, data centre systems spends growth will slow down to 4.2 per cent to USD 210 billion, enterprise software will grow the fastest at 8.5 per cent to USD 431 billion even after notching a 9.3 per cent growth in 2018, it said. IT Services, which is the most crucial part for India, will grow at 4.7 per cent to USD 1.03 trillion, it said.

"We are seeing skills of internal staff beginning to lag as organizations adopt new technologies, such as IoT devices, to drive digital business," Lovelock said, adding half of the IT workforce is in urgent need of developing skills or competencies to support their digital business initiatives. Skill requirements to keep up, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, API and services platform design and data science, are changing faster than weve ever seen before, he added..