1. Enterprise Software

Projected 2017 Growth Over 2016: 7.6 percent

Projected 2017 Spending: $351 billion

Projected 2018 Spending: $381 billion (up 8.6 percent)

With the rise of digital business, there will be a stronger need to automate and release new applications and functionality to drive up revenue, Gartner said in a statement.

Also, "with the increased adoption of SaaS-based enterprise applications, there also comes an increase in acceptance of IT operations management tools that are also delivered from the cloud," Lovelock said.

It all points to the speed of doing business, says Gersh, of Forthright Technology Partners, who cited an example of a business that wants functionality so that its sales team can prepare and deliver sales quotes while they're on the road. They want software that can do that "immediately," he said.