IDC, an advisory firm in the US expects IT spending to reach $496.7 billion in the U.S. and $1.3 trillion on a worldwide level by 2009.While the communications and media, healthcare, financial, and consumer markets are expected to be the most sought-after industries in terms of growth opportunities, government and discrete manufacturing will continue to account for the largest percentage of overall IT spending within the U.S. through 2009. Analysis of the global five-year IT spending forecast, by industry and public sectors, yields similar trends with government and discrete manufacturing being the largest IT spenders, followed by banking.

In the United States, a major portion of government IT spending will stem from the continued need for IT services in order to help privatize large installations that have previously been the domain of government employees. IT services spending alone within the government sector is expected to reach $43 billion by 2009.
IDC’s Worldwide Vertical Markets Program Manager, Anne Songtao Lu, explained that a major catalyst driving continued growth within the nation’s manufacturing sector will be “the globalization of the industry and the widespread production and sourcing locations, which call for centralized ERP systems so that manufacturers can more efficiently manage accounting and fulfill corporate governance requirements, thus driving investment in network equipment to build a fully managed global IP VPN.”
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