Published on the 11/07/2016 | Written by Beverley Head
Overall IT spending in Australia and New Zealand is tipped to rise by 2.8 and 1.9 percent respectively in 2016 compared to last year, while global investment is flat, even “lacklustre” year on year…
According to the latest global IT spending update from Gartner, in A/NZ growth is mainly coming from software and services as sales of devices drop and data centre systems sales plateau.
In Australia IT spending should reach A$83.3 billion this year, with software sales of $10.6 billion overtaking devices on $10.4 billion. IT services at $30.6 billion are the biggest ticket item followed by the $29 billion spent on communications services.
New Zealand’s IT spending is forecast to rise 1.9 percent to almost NZ$11.3 billion.
Communications services in NZ is forecast to be almost flat this year at $4.3 billion, IT services will be up slightly to $3.4 billion while software sales will rise to $1.4 billion.
Gartner’s second quarter update on global IT spending found that overall the IT market for 2016 is absolutely flat.
According to Gartner: “This is not exactly a rebound from the six percent decline in IT spending in 2015, but it is good news. The rapid rise in the value of the US dollar against most currencies during the past couple of years has put a currency shock into the global IT market.”
The impact of the Brexit on global currencies and demand is likely to begin to have an impact during the current quarter however, and it seems likely that even the US market will be in wait-and-see mode until the outcome of the US election is known. Volatility is the new normal. This current Gartner report was based on the assumption that the UK would not exit Europe – the next quarterly report may deliver some surprises for the IT vendors.
According to the Gartner report the US remains the largest single market for IT spending at $US1.8 trillion. “However, the fastest-growing region is Emerging Asia/ Pacific, with 2016 constant-currency growth of 4.8 percent (revised down 1.1 percent from the 1Q16 update).”
Globally the enterprise software market is tipped to grow seven percent this year spurred by demand for cloud-based office solutions. Emerging Asia Pacific and Greater China markets in particular are deploying cloud office solutions, such as Office 365, rather than buying on premise office systems.
