Malaysia’s IT spending to reach RM68mil this year

KUALA LUMPUR: While global IT spending is expected to be flat this year, Malaysia’s IT spending is forecast to grow 6.5% to reach almost RM68bil in 2016.

According to the Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast, global IT spending is forecast at US$3.41tril this year, up from last quarter’s forecast of negative 0.5% growth.

The change in the forecast, it said, is mainly due to currency fluctuations.

The growth rate for Malaysia, however, is smaller at 1.5% when reported in US dollars due to currency fluctuations.

“The current Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast assumes that the UK would not exit the European Union.

“With the UK’s exit, there will likely be an erosion in business confidence and price increases which will impact UK, Western Europe and worldwide IT spending,” said Gartner research vice president John-David Lovelock in a statement.

While the UK has embarked on a process to change, that change is yet to be defined, Gartner said.

It said the “leave” vote will affect IT spending in the UK and in Europe while other changes will take longer.

“Staff may be the largest immediate issue.

“The long-term uncertainty in work status will make the UK less attractive to new foreign workers. “Retaining current non-UK staff and having less access to qualified new hires from abroad will impair UK IT Departments,” it added.

The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast is an indicator of major technology trends across the hardware, software, IT services and telecom markets.

According to the forecast, data center systems’ spending is projected to reach US$174bil in 2016, a 2% increase from 2015, while global enterprise software spending is on pace to total US$332bil, a 5.8% increase.

Devices spending is projected to total US$627bil by the end of 2016.

Spending in the IT services market is expected to increase 3.7%, totaling $898bil, with Japan the fastest-growing region for IT services spending with 8.9% growth.

Communications services spending is projected to total US$1.38tril in 2016, down 1.4% from 2015.