San Francisco, Oct 20 (IANS): Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.6 trillion in 2023, an increase of 5.1 per cent from 2022, a new report said on Thursday.

According to the latest forecast by Gartner, the demand for IT in 2023 is expected to be strong as enterprises push forward with digital business initiatives in response to economic turmoil.

"Enterprise IT spending is recession-proof as CEOs and CFOs, rather than cutting IT budgets, are increasing spending on digital business initiatives," John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, said in a statement.

The report mentioned that the technologies that are being maintained versus those that are driving the business are evident by their projected growth rates in 2023.

There is sufficient spending within data centre markets to maintain existing on-premises data centres, but new spending continues to shift to cloud options, as evidenced by the 11.3 per cent projected growth for software spending in 2023.

"Economic turbulence will change the context for technology investments, increasing spending in some areas and accelerating declines in others, but it is not projected to materially impact the overall level of enterprise technology spending," Lovelock said.

"However, inflation has cut into consumer purchasing power in almost every country around the world. Consumer purchasing power has been reduced to the point that many consumers are now deferring 2022 device purchases until 2023, driving spending on devices down 8.4 per cent in 2022 and 0.6 per cent in 2023," he added.