Gartner: Tech spending set to skyrocket in Australia for 2022

According to a new report by Gartner, tech spending in Australia is set to skyrocket this year.

Overall spending on tech in Australia is forecast to grow 6.3% to reach A$111 billion in 2022, as analysed in Gartner's latest quarterly IT spending forecast update.

Australian organisations will also increase their reliance on external consultants and IT services, with predicted spending on these set to rise 6.1% to reach $39.2 billion in 2022.

Within this category, business and technology consulting spending is expected to grow 8.3% to reach almost $8.5 billion this year.

Looking at a global picture, worldwide IT spending is projected to total US$4.5 trillion in 2022, which is an increase of 5.1% from 2021.

Despite the potential impacts of the Omicron variant and challenges with hybrid work, the company says economic recovery and digital market prosperity will continue to boost technology investments in the future.

Gartner says that in order to keep up with the demand for new solutions, organisations will have to consistently keep up an accelerated pace of change.

"During the next few years, organisations will increase their reliance on external consultants, as the greater urgency and accelerated pace of change widen the gap between organisations' digital business ambitions and their internal resources and capabilities," the company says.

Gartner research VP John-David Lovelock says that more and more companies are starting to look for long term solutions and, therefore, will attribute more spending and resources to projects.

"2022 is the year that the future returns for the CIO. They are now in a position to move beyond the critical, short term projects over the past two years and focus on the long term. Simultaneously, staff skills gaps, wage inflation and the war for talent will push CIOs to rely more on consultancies and managed service firms to pursue their digital strategies," he says.

Lovelock also believes cloud solutions are also responsible for the significant uptake in spending, as external consultants are kept on to oversee these sometimes challenging processes.

"Gartner expects the vast majority of large organisations to use external consultants to develop their cloud strategy over the next few years."

The report shows companies' IT spending across the hardware, software, IT services and telecommunications segments and was based on analysis of sales by thousands of vendors across the entire range of IT products and services.

"These reports help Gartner clients understand market opportunities and challenges," says Gartner.