Gartner's (Ed)ICT

India’s domestic Information Communication Technology (ICT) market is expected to grow at a compounded average rate of 20.3 per cent, to hit $24.3 billion by 2011, according to global research firm Gartner. This means that it would account for 2 per cent of the country’s GDP by then. Currently, Gartner estimates the market to be at $9.6 billion in 2006—with hardware being nearly 55 per cent of the market, and services about 39 per cent. The rest, of about 6 per cent, was accounted for by domestic software in 2006.

The growth over the next four years will be spurred by Indian Chief Information Officers (CIOs) continuing to build and consolidate the basic IT infrastructure, in addition to increasing adoption of technology by Indian small and mid-size businesses (SMBs). More interestingly, according to Gartner’s worldwide survey of CIOs, Indian firms’ IT spending is likely to rise by 13 per cent in 2008 against a global average of 3.3 per cent. “We expect this additional spending by Indian CIOs to be used for building new business capabilities, with nearly 30 per cent of spending to be allocated for business growth and 19 per cent for business transformation,” says Partha Iyengar, Head of Research, India.

According to Gartner, Indian firms are spending their budgets more on hardware and software than people. Keeping the recession in mind, Gartner is asking clients to work on two technology budgets, an official one that assumes uninterrupted growth and another ‘shadow budget’ that prioritises projects.

— T.V. Mahalingam