In its latest forecast, Gartner, the technological research and consulting firm, expects worldwide IT spending to total $5.26 trillion (£4.05tn~) in 2024.

While this is a decrease compared to the previous quarter’s forecast of 8% growth, it’s an increase of the overall spend forecast of $5.06 trillion (£3.9tn~).

The firm’s new forecast sees a 24.1% growth in data centre system spending over 2024, which is up from the previous quarter’s forecast of 10% growth. This is due in large part to increased planning for GenAI.

Speaking on this, John-David Lovelock, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, said: “The compute power needs of GenAI are being felt across the data center, and spending in that segment reflects this ravenous demand.”

Commenting on GenAI more generally, Lovelock explained that it’s “being felt across all technology segments and subsegments, but not to everyone’s benefit.”

“Some software spending increases are attributable to GenAI, but to a software company, GenAI most closely resembles a tax,” Lovelock added.

“Revenue gains from the sale of GenAI add-ons or tokens flow back to their AI model provider partner.”

Data centre system spending is then followed by a forecasted 12.6% growth in software spending, and 7.1% growth in IT services spending.

IT services in particular is down from 9.7% in the last forecast, due in part to slower spending across subsegments that include consulting and business process services.

“The change fatigue in CIOs that we saw at the start of the year has now abated and the contract backlogs going back to the third quarter of 2023 are being cleared,” noted Lovelock.

“We expect to see a larger rush towards the end of the year to make up for the slow start.”

Meanwhile, device spending is expected to grow 5.4%, and communications services 3%.

Recommended reading

• IT Spending to Grow 8% Worldwide in 2024
• CFOs, CEOs Identify AI as Most Impactful Tech Over Next 3 Years
• Glasgow Medtech Nebu-Flow Secures £4.7M in Additional Funding

Gartner’s methodology for its IT spending forecast relies on analysis of the sales by over a thousand vendors across the entire range of IT products and services.

The firm then uses primary research techniques, alongside secondary research sources, to build a database of market size data on which to base its forecast.