Worldwide IT spending is expected to total $5,74-trillion in 2025, an increase of 9,3% from 2024, according to the latest forecast by Gartner.
“Current spending on generative AI (GenAI) has been predominantly from technology companies building the supply-side infrastructure for GenAI,” says John-David Lovelock, distinguished vice-president analyst at Gartner.
“CIOs will begin to spend on GenAI, beyond proof-of-concept work, starting in 2025. More money will be spent, but the expectations that CIOs have for the capabilities of GenAI will drop. The reality of what can be accomplished with current GenAI models, and the state of CIO’s data will not meet today’s lofty expectations.”
Data centre systems spending grew by nearly 35% in 2024. While the segment will not see a jump equal to that in 2025, it is still set to grow by almost $50-billion in 2025.
This is led by server sales, which are set to almost triple from more than $134-billion in 2023 to $332-billion by 2028, including more than $257-billion in 2025.
Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Millions of US Dollars)
| 2024 Spending | 2024 Growth (%) | 2025 Spending | 2025 Growth (%) | |
| Data Centre Systems | 318,008 | 34.7 | 367,171 | 15.5 |
| Devices | 735,764 | 6.2 | 805,722 | 9.5 |
| Software | 1,087,800 | 11.7 | 1,239,779 | 14.0 |
| IT Services | 1,587,913 | 5.6 | 1,737,754 | 9.4 |
| Communication Services | 1,530,299 | 2.0 | 1,596,890 | 4.4 |
| Overall IT | 5,259,784 | 7.2 | 5,747,317 | 9.3 |
Source: Gartner (October 2024)
“GenAI will easily eclipse the effects that cloud and outsourcing vendors had on previous years regarding data center systems,” says Lovelock. “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.”
Spending on software is expected to increase 14% to $1,23-billion in 2025, up from 11,7% growth in 2024. Meanwhile, IT services is expected to grow 9,4% to $1,73-billion in 2025, up from 5,6% in 2024.
“Software and IT services are a large driver of IT growth,” says 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.
“Our forecast projects that $500-billion will be added in spending every year in terms of growth rates. With this in mind, IT spending should cross the $7-trillion mark in 2028.”
Gartner’s IT spending forecast methodology relies heavily on rigorous analysis of the sales by over a thousand vendors across the entire range of IT products and services. Gartner uses primary research techniques, complemented by secondary research sources, to build a comprehensive database of market size data on which to base its forecast.