According to the latest research from IDC, the premier global market intelligence and advisory firm for the information technology and telecommunications industries, the world’s emerging markets are set to spearhead a recovery in global IT expenditure in the coming years, with the Middle East and Africa (MEA) leading the way.
Hosting a panel of global information and communication technology (ICT) experts today at Dubai’s iconic Burj Al Arab, the research firm revealed that IT spending in emerging markets is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.3% through 2012, compared to just 2.5% for the world’s developed markets. And the Middle East and Africa (MEA) will be at the forefront of this surge, with IDC forecasting year-on-year IT spending growth for the region of 11.0% in 2010, as opposed to 9.1% for Central and Eastern Europe, 6.3% for Latin America, 4.4% for Asia/Pacific, and just 1.2% for Western Europe.
Speaking at this morning’s gathering, IDC’s Executive Vice President for International Business Units, Mr. Philippe de Marcillac, stated that sentiment in the world’s emerging markets can best be described as ‘cautiously optimistic’ and that enquiries are increasingly becoming focused on what the recovery will look like rather than on how much worse the situation is going to get.
He went on to say that the Middle East and Africa is rapidly growing in terms of worldwide influence, revealing that while the region garnered just 6% share of global ICT expenditure in 2009, it will be responsible for 17% of the world’s net new expenditure over the coming two years.
Mr. Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey’s Vice President and Regional Managing Director, provided an executive-level view of the ICT landscape in the MEA region and assessed the impact the global economic crisis has had on the priorities of the region’s Chief Information Officers (CIOs).
He described the role of today’s CIO as a ‘balancing act’ centred around the need to optimize, grow, and comply as CEOs enforce almost conflicting demands to cut costs, optimize existing ICT infrastructure, drive business expansion, and ensure compliance with increasingly complex regulatory requirements.
Looking ahead, Mr. Lalchandani sees three key drivers characterizing the ICT landscape of 2010: cost reduction, business alignment, and risk management. These, he says, will lead to a significant increase in investment focus on areas such as datacenter consolidation, virtualization, cloud computing, outsourcing, business analytics, IT governance, disaster recovery, and security.
He also believes that the slowdown in adoption seen in 2009 will result in the release of considerable pent-up demand for infrastructure in certain sectors, positively influencing uptake in the coming 12 to 18 months.
The conference also included an insightful Q&A session with all the panel partners as well as a preview of IDC’s upcoming Middle East CIO Summit 2010. Running under the theme ‘From Pressure to Performance’, the much-anticipated third installment of IDC’s flagship conference will attract more than 100 of the region’s most influential ICT end users to the Madinat Jumeriah on January 24-25 as they gather to hear the views of the industry’s foremost global thought leaders.
Through a series of keynote addresses, authoritative presentations, real-life case studies, and panel discussions, expert speakers will tackle the topics of greatest importance to today’s CIO, such as datacenter efficiency, data and storage management, security, compliance, IT consolidation, automation, virtualization, and the forging of greater IT-business alignment.
Source:http://www.ameinfo.com/221426.html
