According to Gartner, the technological research and consulting firm, worldwide IT spending is expected to total $5 trillion (£3.9t~) in 2024—an increase of 6.8% from 2023.

However, this is down from the previous quarter’s forecast of 8% growth, and while generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) had significant hype in 2023, it will not significantly change the growth of IT spending in the near-term.

“While GenAI will change everything, it won’t impact IT spending significantly, similar to IoT, blockchain, and other big trends we have experienced,” said John-David Lovelock, VP analyst at Gartner.

“2024 will be the year when organisations actually invest in planning for how to use GenAI, however IT spending will be driven by more traditional forces, such as profitability, labour, and dragged down by a continued wave of change fatigue.”

In particular, IT services is anticipated to see continued growth this year, becoming the largest segment of IT spending for the first time.

Spending on IT services is expected to grow 8.7% in 2024, reaching $1.5 trillion (£1.1t~). Gartner said this is largely due to enterprises investing in organisational efficiency and optimisation projects.

Following—and just behind IT services spending—is communications services, which is predicted to have $1.4 trillion (£1.1t~) spent on it in 2024. After communications services comes spending on devices $1t (£787b~), software $732b (£576b~), and data centre systems $261b (£205b~).

As Lovelock mentioned, it’s expected that change fatigue—which happens when there’s too much organisational change—will continue to affect spending growth rates, just as it did last year. The overall IT spending growth rate for 2023 was 3.3%, only a 0.3% increase from 2022.

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Gartner says that change fatigue could manifest as change resistance in 2024, with CIOs hesitating to sign new contracts, commit to long-term initiatives or take on new technology partners.

For the new initiatives that do get launched, the research firm suggested that CIOs will require higher levels of risk mitigation and greater certainty of outcomes during this period of economic unpredictability.