Companies world-wide are expected to ease up on information technology spending this year, as economic headwinds prompt IT chiefs to focus their budgets on subscription-based cloud software and services, according to chief information officers and industry analysts.

Across the board, global spending this year on enterprise IT is projected to grow 3% year-over-year to a total of $4.53 trillion, Gartner Inc. said Thursday. That would mark a significant drawdown from an estimated 10.2% increase in 2021, the IT research and consulting firm said.

Gartner said it expects spending this year to be tempered by a steep decline in purchases of computers, laptops and tablets. Their sales are projected to drop to a combined $767 billion from $808 billion in 2021.

The net gains, Gartner said, are being driven by an anticipated $806.8 billion in spending on software, up 9.6% from last year. As a measure of the growing share of business applications running in the cloud, Gartner said it expects spending by cloud providers on new servers to grow 16.6%, as they build out capacity in data-center facilities.

John David Lovelock, Gartner’s chief forecaster, said inflation, rising interest rates and market volatility are pushing CIOs to rent cloud-based IT infrastructure and software, which offer the advantage of spreading out costs through ongoing subscriptions, rather than lump-sum purchases.

Cloud computing is one of the few areas where IT spending is expected to outpace 2021, he said.

Despite the slowdown in overall spending, a serious reduction in IT budgets is unlikely, Mr. Lovelock added.

“A lot of this spending is no longer considered discretionary,” he said. “IT has moved to the front office to support revenue growth, and even generate revenue by monetizing new services.”

The longer-term outlook for IT budgets, measured as a percentage of company revenue, remains positive, Morgan Stanley said Thursday in a research note. It said growth expectations for IT budgets this year continue to track closely with a 10-year, pre-Covid average of 4.1%.

Morgan Stanley said cloud computing—along with cybersecurity and data analytics—in particular will continue to be top spending priorities for CIOs.

Gary Reiner, operating partner at investment firm General Atlantic and a former senior vice president and CIO of General Electric Co. , said enterprise software has traditionally remained resilient during periods of economic uncertainty.

That is in part because of the stickiness of long-term cloud subscription business models, “but also thanks to the immense value that these solutions can deliver to organizations,” he said.

Areas like cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and data analysis and storage will continue to be bolstered by long-term tailwinds and remain significant parts of enterprise IT budgets, Mr. Reiner said.