Gartner expects 11% growth of software spend in 2023 to $880b
Jeff Bezos was just quoted last week saying “folks better batten down the hatches” and when one of the richest men in the world makes a prediction, people pay attention. Yet Gartner, one of the most influential research houses in the world just shared its results of a recent survey on expected technology spend in 2023, and the results remain solid. Specifically they say 2023 will be a banner year for enterprise software spend, at least - growing a stunning 11% to $880 billion! With software growth comes services growth, generally in a linear fashion. This comes from a survey of over 2,200 CIOs that were interviewed.
Gartner didn’t dispute the impacts of both inflation and “economic turbulence”, yet their CIO surveys say that while some areas like infrastructure will benefit, and others will be impacted, overall CIO spend on business software will be way up in 2023. And software is the biggest beneficiary, up 11.3%, even as other spend areas like devices are being put more on discretionary hold.
CIOs’ top areas of increased investment for 2023 include “cyber and information security (66%), business intelligence/data analytics (55%) and cloud platforms (50%). 32% are increasing investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and 24% in hyperautomation”, per Gartner.
“Economic turbulence will change the context for technology investments, increasing spending in some areas and accelerating declines in others, but it is not projected to materially impact the overall level of enterprise technology spending.” John-David Lovelock, VP Analyst at Gartner. The same analyst when on to say: “Enterprise IT spending is recession-proof as CEOs and CFOs, rather than cutting IT budgets, are increasing spending on digital business initiatives.”
While its been a self-fulfilling prophecy on the way down, perhaps the same can occur on the way back up, starting with continued strong performance by enterprise tech and software specifically, leading to a gradual rebound in beaten down stocks, building sentiment back up, and snowballing from there. We’re definitely not out of the woods, yet I will take any positive news and findings amongst the continuous peppering of expected headwinds.
Source: Gartner