The IT Nerd

Gartner is hosting its IT Symposium/Xpo this week in Toronto. This morning it released the findings of a survey which indicated Canadian IT spending is expected to grow 1.1 per cent in Canada in 2019.

According to the forecast, Canadian IT spending is projected to total $87.8 billion in 2019, an increase of 1.1% year over year. This is down from 3.5% growth in 2018.

Global IT spending is also forecast to grow 1.1% in 2019, reaching $3.79 trillion.

Although Canadian organizations are not as far along in their digital journey as their global counterparts, their use of cloud services is only second to the U.S. “We are seeing an increased investment in off-premises capabilities and decreased investment in on-premises capabilities,” said Mr. Lovelock.

This is reflected in the flat growth for data center systems in 2019 and the strong growth for enterprise software in 2019 and 2020 (see Table 1). The largest cloud shift has so far occurred in application software and that segment is poised for continued strong growth. Gartner also expects increased growth for the infrastructure software segment over the forecast period.

More detailed analysis on the outlook for the IT industry is available in the complimentary webinar “IT Spending Forecast, 1Q19 Update: AI — Use it, Build it or Sell it.”