Europe will lead the world in increased tech spending in 2010, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
'Europe will be the strongest performing region', says a research note from Forrester, 'measured in US dollars, the strongest growth in 2010 will be in Western and Central Europe, where tech purchases will rise by 11.2%, boosted by the dollar's decline against the euro.'
"The technology downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over," says Andrew Bartels, Forrester vp and principal analyst, "all the pieces are in place for a 2010 tech spending rebound. In the US, the tech recovery will be much stronger than the overall economic recovery, with technology spending growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product (GDP) this year."
After declining 8.2% in 2009, US IT spending will grow 6.6% in 2010 to $568bn, says Forrester, with global IT spending, which dropped 8.9% last year, rising 8.1% in 2010 to more than $1.6trn.
Measured in US dollars, global purchases of computer equipment will be up 8.2%, communications equipment buying will rise by 7.6%, software spending will increase by 9.7%, purchases of IT consulting and systems integration services will grow by 6.8%, and IT outsourcing services will rise 7.1%.
Software and computer hardware will see the greatest growth as a new multi-year cycle of technology investment growth and innovation gets underway defined by Smart Computing.
"We are entering a new six- to seven-year cycle of IT growth and innovation that Forrester calls Smart Computing," says Bartels, "new technologies of awareness married to advanced business intelligence analytics make computing smart. Smart Computing rests on new foundation technologies such as service-oriented architecture, server and storage virtualization, cloud computing, and unified communications. 2010 marks the beginning of this next phase of technology advancement."