Worldwide IT spending continues to increase

Research firm Gartner recently announced that worldwide IT spending is expected to increase by 7.1 percent in 2011. Earlier this year, Gartner expected worldwide IT spending to increase by 5.6 percent, with a significant contributing factor being the adoption of tablet computers.

Some factors leading to the new projection include increased spending for enterprise software, IT services and telecommunications. The computing hardware sector is expected to grow by 11.7 percent, reaching nearly $4.2 billion and accounting for the greatest area of IT spending.

Public cloud computing spending is also projected to grow, reaching $89 billion in 2011, which is an increase from the $74 billion spent last year.

"Nevertheless, the emergence and adoption of cloud is an important trend, and in some markets, it's already a significant factor," said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner.

Together, the cloud and tablets are changing the way companies conduct daily business. According to a recent AMD study of public and private organizations across the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions, 90 percent of cloud users access their stored data through PCs, followed by 56 percent through smartphones and 37 percent through tablets.