INDUSTRY WATCH
Regional ICT industry to show modest growth
IDC has presented its early assessment of what lies ahead in 2017 across traditional IT segments , vertical market segments , IoT , innovation accelerators , smart city projects and CIO challenges .
ICT spending in the Middle East , Turkey , and Africa is forecast to total $ 243 billion in 2017 , according to the latest insights presented today by International Data Corporation . IDC expects the region ’ s ICT market to grow 3.6 % YoY in 2017 . While this is down on previous forecasts , it still represents a considerable improvement on the 1.6 % YoY growth that is anticipated for the current year .
“ There is no doubt that 2016 has been a particularly challenging year , characterised by currency volatility , weak oil and commodity prices , and a subsequent softening of government spend ,” says Jyoti Lalchandani , IDC ’ s Group Vice President and Regional Managing Director for META .
“ And while these issues will continue to linger , we expect organisations to start pushing ahead with their planned technology investments as the wait-and-watch period draws to a close . Digital transformation initiatives will top the CIO agenda in 2017 , as emerging technologies are increasingly leveraged in an effort to drive desired business outcomes . Innovation will be key in this regard , and we expect to see considerable disruption of the traditional ICT mix as a result .”
Complementing that disruption will be an acceleration in the shift towards software and services in the region ’ s IT market . Indeed , IDC expects spending on software and IT services to grow at respective CAGRs of 7.0 % and
Jyoti Lalchandani is Group Vice President and Regional Managing Director for IDC Africa , Middle East and Turkey
8.6 % over the 2015-2020 period , far outstripping the 1.7 % rate of growth anticipated for hardware .
Communications , finance , and government will be META ’ s biggestspending verticals in 2017 , but healthcare , transportation , and utilities are expected to be the fastest growing over the five-year forecast period .
IDC expects the markets of South Africa $ 10.5 billion , Saudi Arabia $ 7.5 billion , UAE $ 6.2 billion , and Turkey $ 5.6 billion to once again lead the way in terms of IT spending in 2017 as Third Platform technologies like cloud , big data , social , and mobility become investment imperatives and dominate the ICT decision-making agenda .
The emergence and increasing traction of so-called innovation accelerators such as the Internet of Things , robotics , cognitive systems , virtual reality , next-gen security , and 3D printing will both disrupt and boost this spending on the Third Platform .
IDC outlined five overarching trends that it expects to shape the region ’ s investment landscape over the coming 12 months and beyond .
1The first of those was that cloud will accelerate to a new level of adoption in 2017 , with increased competition among cloud providers set to drive aggressive pricing , bundling , and customer service , as well as a growing focus on securing SME accounts .
The second major trend identified
2 by IDC was that big data analytics will become increasingly more predictive than descriptive in nature , driving new use cases around exploration and discovery , performance management , and operational intelligence .
3IDC ’ s third major trend for 2017 builds on the idea that the emergence of innovation accelerators will usher in a new wave of IT disruption as early adoption gathers pace . In particular , IDC expects the transformational impact of IoT to become more evident over the course of the next 12 months , with the most
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