Overall, the IT market is set to grow significantly in the next few years, seeing an upwards swing in growth rate as demand for a host of IT solutions rises.

However, growth is not set to be apportioned equally by region. North America will see the biggest uptick in growth, but the markets in Central & Latin America, Central & Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa will be more muted. Asia Pacific and Western Europe will both see good growth, but the latter will grow at a slightly faster rate, coming close to overtaking the second biggest IT market by 2021. 

Business process outsourcing  (BPO) services, also known as information technology enabled services (ITES), cover  payroll, human resources, accounting and contact centres, so it is no surprise this area is projected to grow in size. Advances in AI in particular are driving a growth in BPO, as many companies turn to third-party software to cover operations previously handled in-house employees.

Cloud services, which include infrastructure as a services, platform as a service and software as a service, have enjoyed considerable growth of late, and there is no sign this will change. The services are set to continue a dramatic rise in use as companies increasingly make use of cloud-enabled technologies instead of their own in-house solutions, seeing perhaps the largest growth rate across the entire spectrum of IT.

Enterprise communications services, which include conferencing services, enterprise fixed line services, enterprise mobility services, managed and hosted IP PBX and network services, will not see as dramatic growth. This suggests priorities will lie elsewhere, but does reflect a general growth in IT investment.

Uniquely within the IT market, IT hardware, which includes client computing, network infrastructure, security hardware, servers and storage infrastructure, has actually seen a drop in growth from 2015 to now. This is due to the shift to cloud services, but hardware is set to see a modest recovery as new technologies such as the Internet of Things and 5G become more widespread in enterprise.

IT services, which cover application services, consulting and systems integration and instrastructure services, are seeing steady growth with little fluctuation in response to new technologies. This suggests that while there will be modest growth in demand for such services, their use will not be notably impacted by changing IT trends.

Finally, software, which includes enterprise applications, mobility management, information management, security software and software infrastructure, will see only minor growth, and is set to advance solidly in the next few years. This not only reflects a lack of dramatic change within this space, but shows that increased board-level interest in cybersecurity is not likely to translate into dramatic spending increases.