Thailand's IT spending is expected to grow 6.4% year-on-year to 871 billion baht in 2022 with strong growth in enterprise software, driven by continued hybrid work and remote services, according to global research firm Gartner.
Enterprise software is projected to see the highest growth of 14.8% to 61.3 billion baht in 2022, followed by IT services with growth of 9.8% to 85.4 billion and devices with growth of 9% to 220 billion.
Communication service is expected to see the lowest growth of 3.8% next year, but would maintain the largest IT spending segment in the country at 483 billion baht -- about half of the total market.
Spending growth on devices, primarily PCs and tablets, reached a peak of 21.7% in 2021, buoyed by people working and studying from home. Individuals and enterprises upgraded their devices or invested in multiple devices for remote or hybrid work.
Spending on data centre systems is projected to rise 4.6% to 21.6 billion baht.
For 2021, the country's overall IT spending is expected to hit 819 billion baht, up 7.4% year-on-year, a higher rate than the 2022 forecast at 6.4%.
Thailand's projected IT spending growth of 6.4% next year, however, is still higher than the global growth of 5.5% with US$4.47 trillion in IT spending expected in 2022.
In 2021, worldwide IT spending is expected to reach $4.24 trillion, up 9.5% year-on-year.
"Enterprises will increasingly build new technologies and software, rather than buy and implement them, leading to overall slower spending levels in 2022 compared to 2021," said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice-president at Gartner.
"However, digital tech initiatives remain a top strategic business priority for companies as they continue to reinvent the future of work, focusing spending on making their infrastructure bulletproof and accommodating increasingly complex hybrid work for employees going into 2022."
Globally, enterprise software is expected to see the highest growth in 2022 at 11.5% to $669.8 billion, buoyed by infrastructure software spending continuing to outpace application software spending.
Spending growth on devices is projected to reach a peak in 2021 at 15.1%, supported by remote work and online study, and is likely to grow another 2.3% in 2022, said Mr Lovelock.
"What changed in 2020 and 2021 was not really the technology itself, but people's willingness and eagerness to adopt it and use it in different ways," said Mr Lovelock.
"In 2022, chief information officers need to reconfigure how work is done by embracing business composability and the technologies that accommodate asynchronous workflows."
