NEW DELHI: Global IT spending is expected to grow by 3 per cent to $3.6 trillion in 2012 on the back of growth in segments like cloud computing, telecom and consulting services, research firm Gartner said today. 

This is slightly higher than Gartner's projection of 2.5 per cent growth in the last quarter. 

"While the challenges facing global economic growth persist -- the eurozone crisis, weaker US recovery, a slowdown in China -- the outlook has at least stabilised," Gartner Research Vice-President Richard Gordon said in a statement. 

There has been little change in either business confidence or consumer sentiment in the past quarter, so the short-term outlook is for continued caution in IT spending, he added. 

Global IT spendings are expected to grow by 4.4 per cent in 2013 to reach $3.78 trillion. 

Gartner expects global enterprise spending on public cloud services to grow to $109 billion in 2012 from $91 billion in 2011. By 2016, enterprise public cloud services spending will reach $207 billion. 

"Business process as a service ( BPaaS) still accounts for the vast majority of cloud spending by enterprises, but other areas such as platform as a service ( PaaS), software as a service ( SaaS) and infrastructure as a service ( IaaS) are growing faster," Gordon said. 

Worldwide IT services spending is forecast to reach $864 billion in 2012, a 2.3 per cent increase from 2011 and further increase to $905 billion in 2013. 

Demand for consulting services is also expected to remain high due to the complexity of environments for global business and technology leaders, Gartner said. 

Total spending on telecom (equipment and services) is expected to grow to $2.13 trillion in 2013 from $2.06 trillion in 2012 and $2 trillion in 2011. 

Telecom services growth is expected to come not only from net connections, especially in emerging markets, but also in mature markets from the uptake of multiple connected devices, such as media tablets, gaming and other consumer electronics devices, it said. 

Gartner forecast computer hardware market to grow 3.4 per cent in 2012 to $420 billion. The segment is expected to touch $448 billion in revenues in 2013.