A Better But Still Subpar Global Tech Market In 2014 And 2015

The good news for CIOs is that improving economies in the US and elsewhere will generate cash flow to support the purchases of the new mobile, cloud, and smart technologies that are transforming business. The bad news is that economic uncertainty, conservative tech buying practices in general, and cloud pricing models mean that the global tech market will struggle to achieve 6% growth in 2014, though prospects look better for 2015. The US will be the pacesetter, with Latin America and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa also doing well. CIOs will focus their biggest spending increases on software, where growth globally will be 7.1% (in local currency terms) in 2014 and 10.2% in 2015. Analytics and applications in general and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications in particular will attract the fastest growth of any IT spending category. IT consulting and implementation services will also rise in line with higher software spending. Communications equipment will be moderately strong, thanks to mobile-related investments. Computer equipment spending will lag, with the exception of tablets. Spending on IT outsourcing will grow more slowly than the overall tech market.