Gartner thinks enterprise IT will be immune to recession

Despite the abundance of geopolitical uncertainty and darkening economic clouds, global IT spending is projected to hit $4.6 trillion in 2023, up 5.1 percent from 2022, according to Gartner's latest forecast. So sanguine is the omnipresent IT analyst giant on the tech spending outlook, it increased growth estimates for …

[Spazturtle]

"In 2020, the US went into a recession, which according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics was three times deeper than 2009. IT spending in the US went up."

Yes because everybody needed to buy new equipment for home working. But now most companies have got all new equipment which they won't need to replace for years.

[Twanky]

N.S.S.

...businesses that do struggle are going to find that, since the shift to the cloud, they are in less control of their IT spending.

See icon.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Re: N.S.S.

Fairly soon, "private cloud" will be all the rage... what we used to call "on premises"

And the cycle of reinvention starts again...

[Potemkine!]

Re: N.S.S.

Doesn't matter, the beancounters-in-chiefs who took those decisions will be gone with their huge bonuses anyway. And this is all what mattered to them.

== Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to live in the alternate reality that he's evidently from where the phrase "no good deed goes unpunished" doesn't exist and IT isn't always the first thing on the chopping block for spending cuts.

[Anonymous Coward]

>"In 2020, the US went into a recession...

Oh man, i wonder if something else happened in 2020 that might have influenced purchasing behaviour. Some sort of unprecedented reorganisation of every facet of society to minimise face-to-face contract and mobilise an army of researchers, contact tracers and vaccinators, funded by a near-unlimited stream of government debt financed at record low interest rates.

Any ideas, anyone?

Absolute clown-level analysis.

[MOH]

Absolute clown-level analysis?

Yep, that's the Gartner Guarantee! (tm)

[SotarrTheWizard]

'Entering' a recession ??

. . .last time I checked, the definition of a recession was 2 or more consecutive quarters of negative GDP Growth. . Per the US Bureau of Economic Analysis the change in the US GDP so far this year is:

Q1 2022 (3rd) -1.6%

Q2 2022 (3rd) -0.6%

We've been in a recession for 6+ months now. . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 'Entering' a recession ??

Contrary to popular belief this is not in fact the definition of a recession. This is a rule of thumb that stems back to a newspaper column written in the 70s. The actual definition tends to be more along the lines of "when we think it's happening" where "we" is whatever respected body makes such vibes-based-determinations for their geography.

[thejoelr]

Seems dated already.

If they gathered this info in July they missed a lot of huge companies signalling tightening for a recession. This will have spread to other companies even if they aren't affected yet.

The 2020 comparison is so obviously flawed. Spending then was to continue business and not optional. Now it totally is. Just extend the lifetime of existing infrastructure. Their comments on cloud are flawed also. Fewer customers means reduced resources needed to handle them. And in most organizations there is room to cut in their cloud bills including killed project infrastructure. The benefit of cloud being opex cuts both ways. It allows quick resizing, so bills can be adjusted quite rapidly. It isn't quite the same a the cost of buying new servers, but it is false to think that cloud costs can't go down significantly.

I imagine Gartner is aware of some of this and doesn't let reality get in the way of publishing something. Deadlines to meet!

[DJV]

"Gartner thinks enterprise IT will be immune to recession"

Well, given their accuracy record, that pretty much dooms "enterprise IT" to a quick death.

[Pirate Dave]

"You know, once you're on that cloud bandwagon, you can't cut that spending,"

Duh. Isn't this exactly what we were warning the PHBs about 10-12 years ago - that "cloud" was just us growing a teat that the provider could permanently attach themselves to? Oh, and that we no longer have absolute control of our data.