Donald Trump’s victorious election campaign and Brexit are forcing many businesses to adopt a “wait and see” approach to IT investment as worldwide spending stalls.
Gartner is forecasting a spend of $3.5 trillion in 2017, a 2.7 per cent increase from 2016 but three per cent down on earlier projections.
“2017 was poised to be a rebound year in IT spending. Some major trends have converged, including cloud, blockchain, digital business and artificial intelligence,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.
“Normally, this would have pushed IT spending much higher than 2.7 per cent growth.
“However, some of the political uncertainty in global markets has fostered a wait-and-see approach causing many businesses to forestall IT investments.”
Gartner expects the global IT services market to grow 4.2 per cent in the next year.
TechUK has meanwhile launched a set of high level principles designed to help build public confidence in the Internet of Things.