Each January CompTIA peers into its crystal ball, and joining us this year are 650 IT industry executives. Collectively, we work to identify key trends and growth drivers shaping the year ahead. This year, CompTIA’s IT Industry Outlook 2015 confirms much of the positive sentiment found in recent economic and business indicators.
CompTIA’s industry growth projection is at its highest point in years, IT industry business confidence is up and demand for tech workers remains strong. With so many years of uncertainty and false starts, it’s almost difficult to believe the economy is poised for a solid year.
Globally, the IT sector — comprised of hardware, software, services and telecom — reached $3.7 trillion in 2014, according to IDC. The U.S. market represents about 28 percent of the worldwide total, or slightly over $1 trillion.
For the year ahead, CompTIA’s projects 5 percent growth worldwide, which translates to current dollars, this translates to $185 billion in new IT industry revenue. On the upside, if business activity accelerates at a faster rate, growth could hit 7.3 percent. Conversely, any number of factors could act as a drag on growth, resulting in the low end of the forecast, 2.7 percent.
The forecast is most bullish for the growth prospects of the IT services and software categories, with hardware and telecom lagging slightly.
From The Report: 12 Trends to Watch
Providing context to industry growth projections, CompTIA’s developed a related set of macro trends, technology trends and channel trends. When compiling trends lists, prognosticators sometimes fall into the trap of overhyping the future, while overlooking the present. To ensure a balanced approach, CompTIA instead presents a set of key forward-looking trends, as well as counter trends, or factors overlooked, taken for granted or counter to prevailing hype.
The full list of 12 trends can be viewed by logging in and accessing the report free of charge, and is also available this Slideshare highlights presentation.
Among the macro trends, the year ahead will see even greater levels of globalization as technology extends its reach to untapped users the world over.
Similarly, technology has never been more accessible to small businesses. The democratizing effects of technology are visible everywhere. In the year ahead, expect technology to further penetrate the SMB space, creating new opportunities for customers and solution providers.
Businesses and users will continue to seek value from technology in the form of capabilities, but also in its ability to reduce complexity rather than add to it. With innovations such as cloud computing, mobility, business process automation (BPA), managed services and big data, businesses have unprecedented access to tools that can aid in simplification efforts. The push to simplify, however, means battling complexity on many fronts. Solutions providers and IT professionals with the right mix of skills and experience will be well positioned to capitalize on this next wave of digitalization.
CompTIA will revisit many of these themes throughout the year with new research and analysis. Visit the Insights & Tools page of CompTIA.org for a full listing of research and market intelligence.
Tim Herbert is CompTIA’s vice president of research and market intelligence.
