Gartner predicts that 2018 will bring more corproate dollars to enterprise software, by way of new AI automation and digital technology. Growth in the sector has been apparent for some time now, and worldwide software spending is anticipated to increase by 9.5% in 2018 and 8.4% in 2019, for a total of $421 billion. This comes as a result of enterprises shifting their budgets towards software as a service (SaaS) solutions, which is no surprise given new products, such as financial, HR, and analytic management appliations. These services rely heavily on computers to do the work, and often include machine learning functionality to proactively automate repetetive tasks as much as possible.
Compared to 2017, Gartner expects a 4.5% increase in spending this year for a total of $3.7 trillion.
However, buyers are still a bit hesitant to dive right in - uncertainty over the effects of Brexit are looming over European enterprises, and the United States has its own concerns as well. While the outcomes of current events remains uncertain, one thing is known - organizations are moving towars doing business digitally, blockchains, the internet of things, and relying less on big data in favor of AI automation. In fact, $2.9 billion is anticipated to be invested into AI products by 2021 (along with 6.2 billion hours of recouped labor), largely in part due to its fast rate of return and drastic improvements to workflows. IT department spending is expected to fall slightly, likely due to more heavily utilization of cloud services.
This article was based on a January 16, 2018 Computer Weekly article by Cliff Saran.