Business spend on software set to rocket

Analyst firm forecasts sharp rise in enterprise software spending

Spending on enterprise software is set to rise by 9.5 per cent worldwide in 2011, according to analyst firm Gartner.

Economic recovery is evident in all regions across the globe, according to Gartner, and there will be an upswing in IT spending as a result. Total spending on enterprise software will hit $267bn (£164bn) in 2011, it said.

Gartner predicted that spending on enterprise applications, such as enterprise resource planning and office suites, will see double-digit increases in spending.

Firms are forecast to increase the amount they spend on such software by 10.2 per cent in the coming year.

Spending will also increase by 9 per cent for other categories of software, such as database management and operating systems, the analyst group projects.

"The market for enterprise software continues to recover well following the 2009 downturn, with signs of ongoing growth on the horizon," said Joanne Correia, an analyst at Gartner.

Gartner said that businesses in Western Europe will increase their spending on software by more than 11 per cent in 2011, rising from $70.3bn (£43.4bn) in 2010 to 78.3bn in 2011.

But the analyst group expects much of that spending to come from countries such as Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, and Sweden – not the UK.

Gartner’s optimistic view on the state the global economy does not match that of the OECD, which recently said that the world economy was slowing down.