It’s survey time for the IT industry. According to research firm Gartner, Inc., 2012 will see global IT spending by companies to exceed $3.6 trillion, which Gartner says is a three percent increase from last year. Gartner derived its survey results by analyzing “75 percent of the Global 500 companies.”

Although Gartner views this 3 percent increase in spending from last year as pretty bleak, the research group does point out some optimistic notes that come from the cloud.

From the announcement:

In contrast to the rather lackluster growth outlook for overall IT spending, Gartner expects enterprise spending on public cloud services to grow from $91 billion worldwide in 2011 to $109 billion in 2012. By 2016, enterprise public cloud services spending will reach $207 billion.

It’s interesting to note that Gartner does not specifically mention in what ways companies and the public-at-large are using cloud resources, something Zack Whitacker explores over at ZDNet. Whitacker speculates that because of the popularity of tablets and other “thin clients” that do not have a lot of built-in storage capabilities, it’s logical to conclude that people are relying more and more on cloud resources to handle what is no longer available on their own devices—hence, an increase in cloud spending. It seems like you now have no choice but to turn to the cloud!

As for enterprise software, Gartner expects that segment to hit $281 billion this year. Just a couple of weeks ago, the company said that global spending on enterprise application software will reach $120.4 billion for 2012. This bump in enterprise software spending could be just want the doctor ordered for the enterprise software stocks that were beaten down in the markets last week, as Chris Kanaracus of IDG News points out.

From  IDG News:

Many enterprise software stocks suffered last week, following data-integration vendor Informatica's announcement that its second-quarter results would fall short of market expectations. Informatica CEO Sohaib Abbasi cited the "changing macroeconomic environment, especially in Europe," as a contributing factor.