A new study commissioned by Google LLC on how the coronavirus pandemic will affect information technology budgets has found that 60% of enterprises surveyed expect either no change or to increase their spending this year.

The remaining 40% in the survey carried out by International Data Corp. said they anticipate reduced spending due to COVID-19.

But more enterprises are expecting an economic recovery early next year, with two-thirds believing they will either hold the line or increase their infrastructure spending in 2021.

The survey found that growth in IT spending is being driven by the emergence of new workloads including artificial intelligence, data analytics, “internet of things” and data security.

“The global pandemic has further increased businesses’ needs for these capabilities,” Google Cloud Channel Chief Carolee Gearhart said in a blog post.

The big winners will be cloud providers such as Google and competitors such as Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp., which are all benefiting from an enterprise shift to a multicloud strategy that allows customers to keep a better handle on their internal data while taking advantage of pay-as-you-go pricing models.

IDC predicts that global spending on IT software, hardware and services will top $1.3 trillion this year, growing by double-digits compared to the year before. It says software services are the primary growth driver, with DevOps and SecOps or security operations tools expected to account for 43% of global IT spending this year, or $571 billion. Hardware spending will come to $435 billion, accounting for a third of investments, while software spending will reach $315 billion, or 24% of spending budgets.

IDC also outlined another trend that it expects to drive IT spending over the next five years that it calls the “3rd Platform.” The 3rd Platform is a framework that IDC says will advance beyond cloud and big data to encompass data-generating mobile and social media services that will be driven by 5G wireless deployments. It also includes “innovation accelerators” such as AI, IoT, next-gen security, augmented/virtual reality, robotics and 3D printing.

“Innovation accelerator growth rates are expected to be the highest, at 17% over the next five years,” IDC said. “The 3rd Platform also has low double-digit growth — but only when mobile, the growth of which has slowed, is removed.”

Image: IDC