Gartner Forecasts 3.9 Percent Growth in Enterprise IT Spending for 2012 – How Will Insurance IT Budgets Compare?

Worldwide enterprise IT spending in 2012 will increase 3.9 percent over 2011 levels, from $2.6 trillion to $2.7 trillion, according to recent research from Gartner. Contributing to this growth will be 350 companies that will each invest more than $1 billion in IT, the information technology research and advisory company reports.

At a macro level, these IT investments are intended to help drive growth. At the same time, Gartner has identified four trends or "forces" that are specifically influencing enterprise IT spending: the cloud, social, an explosion in information, and mobile. In a press release summarizing the research, the company says: "Where data centers will give way to data clouds, mobile devices become windows into personal clouds. Personal computing will become massive collaborative computing, and information technologies will be overshadowed by information ecologies."

Insurance companies definitely are engaged with these trends, but do these findings reflect what's going on at your own IT organization? Will your IT budget be growing or shrinking in the coming year, and how are these resources going to be targeted? You can tell us about your priorities and concerns by participating in a brief Insurance & Technology survey. We'll be discussing the research at the upcoming I&T Executive Summit at The Boulders Resort & Spa in Carefree, Ariz. (Nov. 6-9). Post-event we'll report in-depth on how the 2012 IT budgets are shaping up. And if you think there's more to the story, let me know at [email protected] or on Twitter at @kathyburger.

Katherine Burger is Editorial Director of Bank Systems & Technology and Insurance & Technology, members of UBM TechWeb's InformationWeek Financial Services. She assumed leadership of Bank Systems & Technology in 2003 and of Insurance & Technology in 1991. In addition to ... View Full Bio