Rise in deployment of on-premises and software as a service (SaaS) is expected to drive global software spending through 2014.
Cloud and customer relationship management (CRM) are expected to drive global IT spending in 2013 and 2014, according to a new report from Gartner.
The report revealed that the public cloud has been witnessing growth in North America and Western European markets, while emerging markets prefer private cloud.
Gartner research analyst, Hai Hong Swineheart, said that results from the survey indicate that software spending will increase modestly worldwide through the 2014 budget year, with new software sales (on-premises) and SaaS driving this increased spending.
"However, significant regional differences in priorities and drivers will require vendors to pursue market-specific strategies," Swineheart said.
North America and Western Europe regions are expected to witness low budget rises over the next two years, while Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia/Pacific, would witness the largest budget rises in software spending.
The report also revealed that new software licenses are important priority in emerging regions, with 69% of survey respondents expecting new software license budgets to increase in 2014, over 47% from mature regions.
Gartner analysts said that the regional differences would relate to the amount of mature systems with maintenance and technical support fees.
Due to the rise in economic pressures and inclusion of other factors such as resource limits and skill shortages, organisations have reported overwhelming interest in cloud computing and other options that externalise IT, the research company said.
About 60% of respondents are planning to increase their budget in SaaS/public cloud in North America within the2014, while 34% of respondents planned to increase their budget on hosted applications in Asia/Pacific region.
"It's very clear that mature regions are focusing on public cloud computing, while emerging regions are focusing on private cloud computing," Swineheart said.
"This could be due in part to an immature telecommunications infrastructure in some emerging countries while data security is a persistent concern related to public cloud services among our clients in developing-region enterprises."
According to the survey, CRM has edged past enterprise resource planning (ERP) as the top application software investment priority, which validates a business focus on improving customer experience.
Survey respondents indicated that CRM, ERP, and office as well as personal productivity tools were their top prioritised application software investment initiatives for 2013.
Additionally, the report said that security software topped the list of infrastructure software investment priorities, mainly due to the evolution of new threats, as well as by modified working practises.
Virtualisation infrastructure software was the third priority and is expected to grow as most organisations have plans to transform to 70% virtualisation within coming years.
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