Global IT spending to grow 1.4% in 2017

Lovelock: "Enterprises are moving away from buying servers from the traditional vendors and instead renting server power in the cloud from companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft."

According to the latest forecasts from Gartner, while the forecast of global IT spending was down by 2.7% from the previous quarter, it is expected to grow by 1.4% in 2017, reaching a value of $3.5tn.

John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, said: "The strong U.S. dollar has cut $67 billion out of our 2017 IT spending forecast.

"We expect these currency headwinds to be a drag on earnings of U.S.-based multinational IT vendors through 2017."

Additional forecasts from Gartner show that the global IT services market may grow by 2.3%in 2017, a decline from the 3.6% growth reported in 2016. Part of this change is attributed to adjustments to particular geographies as a result of anticipation of changes in US policy, both on the home front and foreign. From Gartner's standpoint, the policies of the new US administration is seen as business-friendly and is expected to have a positive impact on the US's implementation service market .

Elsewhere, the data centre system segment is also projected to grow by 0.3% in 2017.

"Enterprises are moving away from buying servers from the traditional vendors and instead renting server power in the cloud from companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. This has created a reduction in spending on servers which is impacting the overall data centre system segment," explained Lovelock.