Gartner: Global trade and politics sure look interesting. Yep. Oh, BTW, world+dog will still spend more on IT in 2019

Despite, er, you know the drill...

Neither Britain's exit from the European Union, nor a trade tariff standoff between China and the US, nor uncertainty caused by talk of recession shall stymie tech spending this year, so say the tea-leaf readers at Gartner.

Everyone's fave multimillion-dollar-turnover market research house forecast the IT industry's coffers would swell to $3.767 trillion in 2019, up 2.8 per cent year on year, "despite" these factors. Why?

Cue John Lovelock, research veep, who issued a prepared remark:

"IT is no longer just a platform that enables organisations to run their business on [sic]. It is becoming the engine that moves the business," he assured us.

Every major sector of technology industry will see an uplift in spending, the Gartner man claimed, though – boosted by the cloud – he expects enterprise software to report the biggest percentage rise to reach $431bn, up 8.5 per cent from last year's $397bn due to the shift to online software services.

IT services is calculated to rise 4.7 per cent to $1.03 trillion; data centre systems by 4.2 per cent to $210bn; devices by 1.6 per cent to $679bn; and comms services by 1.3 per cent to $1.417 trillion.

This is the first forecast from Gartner for 2019, though it certainly won't be the last. The analyst had predicted the industry would grow to $3.5 trillion in 2018 but when it checked the receipts, it actually came in at $150bn up on that, at $3.650 trillion.

Fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, a cleaner, er, Brexit than anyone in Britain anticipates or American prez Donald Trump and Chinese premier Xi Jinping cuddling up may all help to change the complexion. ®