IT spending in India to touch $93 billion in 2021 -- but it's still low!

Gartner in its latest forecast expects IT spending in India touch $93 billion in 2021, driven by digitisation of businesses outside of technology. Despite an increase of 7.3 per cent compared to last year, India's spend will be lower than global average, as worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.1 trillion in 2021, an increase of 8.4 per cent year-on-year (YoY).  While the world IT spending forecast expects devices (14 per cent) and enterprise software (10.8 per cent) to lead the growth with organisations looking at spending on innovation, ease and productivity of workforce, Cloud is expected to drive majority of the expected software growth in India this year.

"IT no longer just supports corporate operations as it traditionally has, but is fully participating in business value delivery," said John-David Lovelock, Vice President Research at Gartner. Not only does this shift IT from a back-office role to the front of business, but also changes the source of funding from an overhead expense that is maintained, monitored and sometimes cut, to the thing that drives revenue, he added.

According to Gartner, Data Centre Systems segment will see an approximate spending of  $3,559 million, a 4.3 per cent YoY increase, while Enterprise Software segment will see nearly $7,713 million spent, a 13.3 per cent increase over last year . The devices segment which took a knock in 2020 seeing a decline of 15.2 per cent in spending is also expected to increase from $32,213 million in 2020 to $34,692 million in 2021, an increase of 7.7 per cent. Similarly IT services will also see nearly a 9 per cent increase in spend of around $16,793 million.

"The Indian economy is observing a slow but steady growth trajectory this year. Additionally, the government relaxation of foreign investment in certain sectors such as insurance, infrastructure, telecommunications will provide additional funds for business and IT leaders to accelerate their digital transformation journey," said Naveen Mishra, senior research director at Gartner.

Though lessons from 2020 and increased certainty of businesses are not expected to reduce cost optimisation efforts the companies are undertaking, CIOs are expected to complete the digital business plans that are aimed at enhancing, extending and transforming their company's value proposition for the rest of the year.

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