Spending on IT should grow this year and in 2014, Forrester has predicted.
Businesses and individuals around the world are likely to spend more money on IT this year and next than they did in 2012, according to a new report from Forrester.
Its latest spending forecast found IT spending growth was a little bit slower than expected last year, growing by only 1.2 per cent.
This year though, it is thought that expenditure will go up by between 3.3 per cent and 5.4 per cent once local currencies are taken into account.
Software will account for much of this, increasing by 4.4 per cent, but IT hardware could also grow by 2.1 per cent.
Principal analyst Andrew Bartels said IT consulting and systems integration is likely to increase by 3.6 per cent, suggesting companies are becoming more willing to think about how third parties can help them to ensure operations run smoothly.
For example, they may want to spend money on document scanning now to save time and expense in the long run.
Forrester found that hardware was the worst performing sector of the technology industry in 2012, with the exception of Apple and its sought-after iPads and iPhones.
Mr Bartels expects that by 2014, global IT spending will have risen by 6.7 per cent as the world’s economies strengthen.
"Big data, analytics, mobility, cloud computing, and collaboration are the big drivers of IT spending growth in the coming year," he commented.
"In software, business intelligence and analytics apps will big the hot products, along with smart process apps for collaborative business processes."
It comes after IDC released research in September 2012 showing that spending on data protection had increased by 2.4 per cent, while the corresponding figure for data protection was 2.2 per cent.
it is always prudent to have a protection strategy in place, so as to mitigate the risk of lost data in the first place.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is by investing in offsite and online backup, which will allow you to maintain access to important files if your local servers fail.