​Australian IT spend to reach AU$79b in 2015: Gartner

Australian companies are anticipated to increase their technology spend by 4.2 percent from last year to AU$78.7 billion in 2015, according to Gartner's latest IT spending forecast.

IT spend has been divided into the following segments: Devices, datacentre systems, software, IT services, and telecommunications services.

Much like last year, Gartner said Australian organisations are most likely to put more than a third of their money towards IT services, followed by telecommunications services, including fixed voice, data and mobile voice, and data services.

The largest segment that will see the greatest increase in spend will be software. In 2014, Australian organisations spent AU$7.9 billion in this space, and it is predicted that this will increase to $8.6 billion in 2015.

Similarly, IT spend in New Zealand is also forecast to grow to NZ$11.4 billion in 2015, an increase of 2.2 percent from last year.

Unlike Australian companies, New Zealand organisations will continue to spend a majority of their IT budget on telecommunications services, followed by IT services. However, spending will decline on telecommunications services during 2015.

In comparison to worldwide IT spending, both Australia and New Zealand will be going against the trend. Gartner expects that worldwide IT spending will shrink in 2015 to $3.66 trillion, a 1.3 percent decrease from 2014.

The slowdown in global spending will be reflected mostly in the devices, IT services, and telco services segments, which will decline by 1.2 percent to $685 billion, 0.7 percent to $942 billion, and 2.6 percent to $1.5 trillion, respectively.

Gartner research vice president John-David Lovelock has attributed the overall decline mainly to the increase in value of the US dollar.

"The recent rapid rise in the value of the US dollar against most currencies has put a currency shock into the global IT market. Taking out the impact of exchange rate movements, the corresponding constant-currency growth figure is 3.1 percent, only off 0.6 percent from last quarter's update. Such are the illusions that large swings in the value of the dollar versus other currencies can create," he said.

"However, this illusion masks a bigger issue that has real implications. Every product or service that has a US dollar-based component must have those costs covered at the lower exchange rate. The simple implication is that there will be price rises. However, there are many other market forces at work -- protecting US dollar profits will require a nuanced and multifaceted approach involving pricing, partners, and product management."

Despite some declines, Gartner also predicted that worldwide IT spend on enterprise will increase in enterprise software to AU$320 billion in 2015, a 2.3 percent jump from the previous year.