Over the last quarter, the U.S economic outlook has been clouded with uncertainties surrounding the fiscal cliff, contracting GDP growth, and declining international trade owing to reduced economic activity in the Euro zone. IDC expects the U.S. economy to stabilize in the second half of 2013, leading to moderately strong IT spending growth.

"Global uncertainty has subdued the willingness of firms to expand their IT budgets," said Ted Dangson, vice president in IDC's Global Technology and Industry Research Organization (GTIRO). "Yet we've seen continued investments by companies as they prioritize the replacement of outdated technology, and pursue strategic IT initiatives focused on big data and analytics, cloud computing, and mobility."

"We expect total IT spending by enterprises in Arizona, North Dakota, Utah and Texas to grow at the highest rates in the country over the next year, at more than 7 percent across all industries," said Natasha Menon, research analyst in GTIRO. "This growth is being driven by a high percentage of healthcare, manufacturing, and professional services businesses in these states and IT spending aligns with economic projections of employment growth in these industries."

Specific industries expected to grow at above-average rates for the coming year include healthcare, which is forecast to grow by more than 8 percent in 2013, due in part to the need to process and analyze increasing volumes of data from new clinical systems. The professional services industry is also expected to grow more than 8 percent; a high correlation between overall corporate profitability and IT spending by professional services firms suggests robust spending within this industry as corporate profits are forecasted to improve.

IDC's United States Black Book: State IT Spending by Vertical Market is a quarterly analysis of the status and projected growth of the IT industry in 50 states, segmented by 15 vertical markets as well as 15 technologies across hardware, software and services. The quarterly releases are provided as Microsoft Excel pivot tables that allow for customized views of the data. The current release offers IT spending forecasts for the 2011-2016 period.

The data is based on IDC's Worldwide Black Book, which provides forecasts for IT spending in 54 countries around the world. IT spending forecasts focus on 25 individual market segments across hardware, software, IT services and telecom services. Additional products in this category include the Worldwide Enterprise Black Book, which analyzes annual IT spending in relation to four company size segments based on employee counts. The Worldwide Black Book, Premium Edition, includes cloud spending forecasts, quarterly IT spending forecasts by region, IT vendor market share analysis, macroeconomic indicators, IT/Internet penetration, and CIO survey data.

Source: IDC