Gartner is predicting that IT spending will continue to grow in 2025. Specifically, they predict a 9.3% increase from this year, with the total spending equaling $5.74 trillion.
Generative AI investments are driving data center spending, which grew by 34.7% in 2024, and represented the biggest increase of the various IT spending categories. Gartner doesn’t think spending will grow by that much in 2025, but will still increase by 15.5%. The total spending in 2025 is anticipated to be $367 billion.
“GenAI will easily eclipse the effects that cloud and outsourcing vendors had on previous years regarding data center systems,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner. “It took 20 years for the cloud and outsourcing vendors to build up spending to $67 billion a year on servers. The demand of GenAI will help nearly triple server sales from 2023 to 2028.”
Other areas that will see increases spending in 2025 include:
- Software – 14%
- Devices – 9.5%
- IT Services – 9.4%
- Communications services – 4.4%
While they have a lower year-over-year increase, the other IT spending categories represent higher overall spending than data centers. For instance, IT services is the highest spending category at $1.7 trillion in 2025.
“Software and IT services are a large driver of IT growth,” said Lovelock. “Spending on these segments is expected to be on AI-related projects, including email and authoring. This was a market that, despite its age and having been consolidated down to a small number of players, will add $6.6 billion to global spending in 2024 and $7.4 billion 2025 due in part to GenAI products and services.”
Looking beyond 2025, Gartner predicts IT spending to cross the $7 trillion mark by 2028.
To make its predictions, Gartner creates a database from information on sales of over one thousand IT products and services vendors as well as incorporating secondary research sources.
The firm will further discuss these trends at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, which is happening in Orlando, FL this week.
