Australia's IT spend forecast dips

Australia is expected to spend slightly less on IT than expected three months ago, with analyst firm Gartner trimming its expectations to $76.9 billion for 2014.

The spending, if achieved, would represent a 2.5 percent increase on 2013, according to the firm.

However, it is lower than Gartner's last forecast made in October 2013, which pegged IT spending expectations for Australia for 2014 at $77.2 billion.

Thesame slowdown was evident in Gartner's estimates for the Asia Pacific region.

Gartner now expects Asia Pacific IT spending to come in at US$758 billion ($849.4 billion) for 2014. It had previously tabled spending expectations of US$767 billion.

The firm attributed the slowdown to downward revisions in spending expectations on data centre systems, telecommunications and IT services.

However, if spending hits the forecasted levels, it would still be higher than in the largely "flat" 2013 calendar year.

Enterprise software is expected to lead IT spending this year, achieving year-on-year growth of around 6.8 percent.