Business IT spending in the EMEA region will rebound in 2011 after two years of decline, according to an analyst firm.
Gartner has forecast spending will hit $795.2 billion (493.1 billion) next year, up by 1.3 per cent in 2010.
However, growth in the region will be sluggish through to 2014 due to public sector budgetary constraints in various nations following the financial crisis, the analyst body said.
This year enterprise IT spend is expected to fall 2.1 per from 2009, Gartner explained.
"This decline in IT spending in 2010 is placing EMEA as the slowest region to fully overcome the downturn," said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president and global head of research at Gartner.
"We expect Western Europe to record the worst decline in EMEA in 2010 (-3.3 per cent), and experience the slowest long-term growth rate with a compound annual growth rate of 0.8 per cent through 2014."
All sub-segments of the business IT sector bar one will see a decline in spending this year.
The only area expected to return growth in 2010 is the computing hardware market, as Gartner has predicted spending in the segment will reach $79.4 billion, representing a 4.6 per cent increase from last year.
"We are seeing a rise in shipments across hardware due to the low volumes in 2009 and from organisations gradually returning their replacement cycles to a normal length," Sondergaard said.
Within hardware, storage has the best outlook through to 2014 as capacity demands continue to escalate.
Despite hardware's positive performance this year, Gartner believed software spending would surpass outgoings on hardware through to 2014 as companies start a new software applications replacement cycle.
