New Delhi, Oct 4 (IANS): Global IT spending is projected to hit $3.7 trillion in 2018 -- a 4.3 per cent increase from 2017, market research firm Gartner said on Wednesday.

Enterprise software and IT services are expected to exhibit strongest growth with 9.4 per cent ($387 billion) and 5.3 per cent ($980 billion) respectively.

The Devices segment, Data Centre Systems and Communications Services are expected to grow by 5 per cent, 1.8 per cent and 2.2 respectively to reach $697 billion, $176 billion and $1,417 billion spending.

According to Gartner, there are 10 markets within these segments which will make up for most of the IT spending forecast, which includes three Cloud segments -- Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), integrated-Platform-as-a-Service (iPaas) and communications-Platform-as-a-Service (cPaaS).

"Global IT spending is showing little overall growth, as are traditional markets. These top 10 markets will be the key to remaining relevant and achieving growth in the future," said John-David Lovelock, Research Vice President, Gartner, in a statement.

The other markets include technologies that enhance the digital workplace, such as workstream collaboration, workforce analytics and video message-oriented middleware (MOM), security (endpoint detection and response), analytics (smart data discovery) and storage (in-memory data grids).