Why the IT Industry Will See Robust Spending Growth in 2015

By Don Reisinger

The IT industry is set for rapid growth in 2015, research from CompTIA shows. The company predicts that the IT industry’s revenue will grow 5 percent in 2015. In the U.S. only, revenue growth will be about the same at 5.1 percent. To put those figures into perspective, worldwide year-over-year revenue growth over the last few years was around 3 percent, so 2015 looks like it will be a good year for IT.

While the entire IT industry is expected to grow in 2015, much of that success will be realized in software and services. CompTIA found that hardware revenue growth will reach 3.8 percent in 2015, compared with 4.9 percent for software revenue and 5.3 percent for IT services. Telecom revenue is slated to rise by 4 percent.

Confidence in the IT industry and where it’s headed is at an all-time high. According to CompTIA, over two-thirds of IT professionals say they are confident in the future of IT, topping the 65 percent who echoed the sentiment last year. In 2009, confidence was at a low of 49 percent. Things are looking up.

As anyone who has been working in the IT industry knows, there have been some “growth inhibitors” affecting the space over the last couple of years. However, according to CompTIA, some of those inhibitors have subsided. For instance, just 40 percent of people say that they are seeing price sensitivity in the marketplace, compared with 45 percent last year. The percentage of respondents sensing “paralysis” in the IT industry has shrunk from 32 percent in 2014 to 27 percent this year.

In 2015, increases in IT spending across the enterprise are surprisingly widespread, with 47 percent of companies saying they will increase spending on technology this year. In 2014, that figure stood at 40 percent. Whether the company is small or large, CompTIA says the writing is on the wall: Higher investment in IT is a guarantee in 2015.

The IT space is set for a rapid expansion of workers in 2015, according to CompTIA. The company says that the majority of respondents to its survey are looking to hire more people, and by year’s end well over 100,000 new employees will enter the IT workforce. Last year, 4.9 million people worked in core IT occupations. That number will likely exceed 5 million in 2015.

What are companies looking for in IT professionals? According to CompTIA’s study, which analyzed job postings, there appears to be a strong need for technicians, network engineers, application developers, security experts and computer programmers. The number of job postings for Web developers and telecom engineers has slumped in the past year.

For companies seeking qualified IT candidates for jobs, troubles abound. A whopping 68 percent of IT executives say they expect to face “a challenging or very challenging hiring environment for technical positions” in 2015. One in five companies say they can’t find qualified people and have resigned themselves to understaffing.

What do companies do when they’re understaffed? The CompTIA study found that 43 percent of companies simply force their employees to work more, while another 31 percent say that they hire contract workers. About a third of respondent re-deploy staff from lower-priority IT projects, and 20 percent of companies are automating tasks.

Looking ahead, CompTIA says that there are several IT trends for us all to watch. The company says we should all expect IT to attempt to simplify complexity in the office, improve security, acknowledge the Internet of things and enhance marketing to reduce the IT skills gap. One other important finding is that data handling will become a “core competency” in 2015, CompTIA says.