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Worldwide IT expenditure is predicted to rise by nearly five per cent in the year 2008, a report by an information technology research company has found.

Jim Tully, an analyst at Gartner, said that there had been a shift towards technologies to which IT is central to, with the popularity of new ideas such as cloud computing and wireless internet access.

Gartner predicted that the effects on IT sales of replacing "obsolete systems", as well as the demand for technology by emerging national industries, will cause the industry to exceed $3.4 trillion (£18 trillion) in revenue by the end of the year, up by eight per cent on spending in 2007.

Mr Tully said in his report: "In addition to regional shifts, a strong shift to mobile PCs is occurring.

"The higher prices of these products result in increasing revenue per unit and a boost to the overall market."

Last week, vnunet.com reported on Gartner's plea to businesses to embrace Web 2.0, a system which will deliver a "flexible and agile" capability for IT systems.

More than half of small businesses (53%) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support, London based Connect conducted the research in 2007.