The global IT spending forecast, which Gartner said is used to inform key technology decisions by more than 75 percent of the Global 500 companies, is derived from analyses around the world by more than 200 of the company's business and technology analysts.
Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement that "the outlook has at least stabilized" for IT spending, given such global economic challenges as the Eurozone crisis, the weakness of the U.S. recovery, and a slowdown in China, among other factors.
The forecast does envision at least one "bright spot" that contrasts with overall, lackluster growth -- enterprise spending on public cloud services. That sector is expected to grow from $91bn last year to about $109bn this year, reaching about $207bn by 2016.
