Financial markets up spending on IT in year ahead

Analyst Gartner has increased its forecast for worldwide IT spending in 2013, revising its Q3 2012 figure up from 3.8 per cent growth to 4.2 per cent higher than last year’s figure. The analyst is now forecasting that worldwide IT spending will hit $3.7 trillion in 2013.

Written by: Peter Dinham | Published in: Cloud ComputingWorldwide IT spending is on track to reach US$3.6 trillion this year with a modest three percent increase from 2011 spending of $3.5 trillion, and with enterprise spending on public cloud services one significant growth area in what analyst firm, Gartner, describes as a “lacklustre growth outlook” for the global IT market.

There were weak spots in the last quarter of 2011 for sector bellwethers Google, IBM, Intel and Microsoft, but corporate demand for technology appeared to remain resilient going into what is expected to be a year of slower growth for global IT spending.

Technology analyst Ovum concluded its report into IT investment in the financial markets sector in June, so it could be forgiven for the upbeat assessment back then.

The global recession hit SMBs harder than expected and IDC has revised earlier growth forecasts for the sector, predicting that spending on IT by small-to-medium businesses will increase by just 5.5 percent between now and 2014, which is considerably lower than previous forecasts.

A win for DFJ Esprit today, the European partner of Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, following the news of a successful acquisition of its portfolio company Redkite Financial Markets by NASDAQ-traded NICE Systems. DFJ Esprit only invested in Redkite in July 2011. Redkite has a real-time software solution for financial market surveillance.

With just four days before the financial year closes Australia’s small businesses are tightening their belts – and ICT spending is one of the areas being reined in.

National IT recruitment firm, FiniteIT has grown steadily to record a solid result despite a slowdown in demand for technology jobs in the key markets of Sydney and Melbourne in the second half of the 2011 financial year.

Enterprise software provider, TechnologyOne has created a senior role in the company to service the financial and managed services markets, appointing a former Mincom director to the position, as it realigns its business along industry sector lines.