The data analysts at Gartner came out with a hefty report Monday that ponders the outlook for information technology spending worldwide for the rest of this year and the next few.
It is a number-laden tome whose overall findings aren’t particularly surprising. Spending on information technology worldwide, Gartner projects, will grow at a rate a bit higher than global economic growth — up 10 percent (4.5 percent adjusted for a weak dollar), to $3.4 trillion this year. The weakness in the United States will be offset by the strength in emerging economies, and not just the well-known BRIC bloc (Brazil, Russia, India and China). In the Middle East and Africa, Gartner expects technology spending to rise by 15 percent this year.
But the information technology sector has become so large and so central to the world’s economy that the spending total is not the place to look. The top-line numbers, almost inevitably, mask the ferment beneath.
