Mumbai, Jul 15, 2022, IANS

Mumbai, July 15 (IANS) The IT spending in India is likely to reach $114.9 billion in 2022, growing 7.7 per cent from last year, a Gartner reports said on Friday.

Global economic uncertainty continues to be an area of concern for the Indian enterprises.

Indian IT spend is expected to maintain robust 7.7 per cent growth in 2022 as compared to 2021 growth rate of 21.2 per cent.

"Ongoing investment on hyper-scale data centers coupled with average selling price (ASP) increase is forecast to drive 13.6 per cent revenue growth for data centers in 2022. Digitisation and application modernization will trigger software refresh including ongoing SaaS adoption," said Naveen Mishra, senior director analyst at Gartner.

While IT spending is expected to grow, it will be at a much slower pace than 2021 due to spending cutbacks on PCs, tablets and printers by consumers, causing spending on devices to shrink 5 per cent worldwide.

The global IT spending is projected to reach $4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 3 per cent from 2021, according to the latest forecast by Gartner.

"Inflation is top of mind for everyone. Central banks around the world are focusing on fighting inflation, with overall inflation rates expected to be reduced through the end of 2023," said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president at Gartner.

Organisations that do not invest in the short term will likely fall behind in the medium term and risk not being around in the long term, he added.

The critical IT skills shortage being felt across the globe is expected to abate by the end of 2023 when the corporate drive to complete digital transformations slows down and there has been time for upskilling and reskilling of existing staff.

However, in the near term, CIOs will be forced to take action to balance increased IT demand and dwindling IT staffing levels.

Worldwide software spending is expected to grow 9.6 per cent to $806.8 billion in 2022 and global spending on IT services is forecast to reach $1.3 trillion.

"Tasks that require lower skill sets tend to be outsourced to managed service firms to alleviate staff time, while critical strategy work, which requires high-end skills unobtainable by many enterprises, will increasingly be fulfilled by external consultants," said Lovelock.