Gartner Says India IT Spending To Reach $71.5 Billion in 2013

“India like other emerging markets continues exercising strong momentum despite inflationary pressures and appreciation of local currencies, which are expected in rising economies,“ said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president and global head of research at Gartner.

The telecommunications market is the largest IT segment in India with IT spending forecast to reach $47.8 billion in 2013, followed by the IT services market with spending of $10.3billion. The computing hardware market in India is projected to reach $9.5 billion in 2013, and software spending will total nearly $4.0 billion.

Software will record the strongest revenue growth at 15 percent, IT services will grow at 12 percent. The telecom segment, which accounts for 67 percent of the Indian ICT market, is set to grow at 7 percent revenue growth in 2013.

“Businesses are increasingly looking to IT to help support the challenges of enhancing customer support, supply chain management, optimizing business processes or helping drive innovation in the business,”  Sondergaard said. “These demands are being placed on IT in an environment in which the infrastructure (hardware and software) foundation of IT within many enterprises may not be entirely in place. IT is also in transition from being viewed as a back-office support function to a frontline business-focused function.” 

In Gartner’s latest CEO survey, 85 percent of CEOs believe they will be negatively impacted by the global economic slowdown. However, IT will remain well supported by CEOs compared with other areas of investment.

Two-thirds of CEOs believe IT will make a greater contribution in their industries in the next 10 years than in any prior decade. Despite the troubled global economy, 40 percent of CEOs intend to raise their investment in IT. Eighty percent of them can name a company that is using IT-related innovation for competitive advantage.

This has a cascading impact on the role of a CIO who will now have to think strategically and having a direct contribution in the way business works and the way the global economy develops.