Software is expected to represent the second-largest portion of the IT budget in most countries, with the exception of India (where software and hardware spend are roughly equal) and Australia (where spending is notably higher on IT staff), said Gartner, adding that India is the most aggressive with the highest software budget allocation (26.9 percent), followed by Singapore (25.8 percent), Malaysia (24.1 percent) and China (23.1 percent).

When looking at horizontal enterprise applications, the software segment with the highest percentage of respondents indicating an increase in spending is CRM, followed by respondents in office applications, collaboration, and ERP software respectively, Gartner noted.