The demand for skilled engineers causes enterprises to invest in IT Training. While we hear a lot about the size of the overall IT marketplace, most of the attention is paid towards the cost of hardware and software requirements and not training. We know that IT training represents a portion of the overall market, but how much?
Let’s start with the premise that the IT Training industry is a subset of the overall IT industry. Gartner reports that the global spend for IT services is approximately $3.2 trillion. Based on my experience in working with IT training organizations, and from advice from sources such as TrainingIndustry.com on the overall size of the training industry, we estimate that training represents about 2% of the overall spend for IT services.
In other words, we estimate that about $57 billion are spent globally to provide training and back office services on IT topics such as security, applications, servers, storage, infrastructure and more. These topics span across 21 industry sectors including high-tech, retail, food, utilities and more. These numbers are supported by data from TrainingIndustry
who reports that the US market for IT learning to be approximately $18B in 2009 (32% of the overall).
Also, reporting from the Times of India, the APAC market is estimated to be $5.8 billion in 2009, off 25% from 2008 (13% overall). While no reliable data could be located on the EMEA and other markets, we could assume that EMEA represents a significant portion of the remaining market.
What is obvious is that as the overall IT market ebbs and flows, so does the IT training market. What may have began more than a decade ago as an industry closely tied to IT equipment manufactures now goes beyond hardware and touches every vertical industry in just about every place in the world. The world cannot live without Information Technology and hence cannot live without the training that keeps IT ticking.
If you have any comments about the size of the IT training market, please feel free to comment below. And your feedback is welcome at
bob.austin@itlearnblog.com.
