Global spending on IT and communications technology by businesses and government agencies will jump over the next two years, led by the United States, according to analysts at Forrester Research.
In their report—”The Global Tech Market Outlook for 2015 to 2016—Five Themes That Will Define the Tech Market”—the Forrester analysts also said that tech spending for new projects will see a boost over the next two years, and that businesses, particularly in the United States and other countries with growing confidence in their outlooks, will focus more on growing revenues and less on cutting costs.
Forrester expects tech purchases by businesses and governments worldwide will grow 4.1 percent this year and 6.3 percent in 2016. That includes not only tech and communications hardware, but also software and services, the analysts said.
The numbers represent a significant improvement over 2014, which saw a 2.3 percent growth in purchases.
“Not only does the U.S. have the largest country-level tech market by far, it will have one of the fastest growth rates at 6.3% in 2015 and 6.1% in 2016,” Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels wrote in a post on the firm’s blog earlier this month. “U.S. businesses and governments are also leaders in adopting new mobile, cloud, and analytics technologies. Among other large tech markets, China, India, Sweden, and Israel will also have strong tech market growth, while Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and especially Russia will lag.”
The stronger dollar is having an impact on the forecast, he wrote: “Measured in local currency terms, the growth track for the global tech market is higher with a gentler upward slope, from 3.3% in 2014 to 5.3% in 2015 and 5.9% in 2016.”
Among the other findings in the report, the growth of tech spending for new projects over the past several years has lagged, as organizations dealt with the uncertainty in their business outlooks by focusing more on maintaining and operating the systems and software they already had. However, spending on new projects will grow over the next two years as organizations gain more confidence in the future.
Thanks to new technologies around mobile, analytics and cloud computing, the trend is away from hardware and what Bartels called “classic outsourcing” and more toward software and related services.