Consumer-facing industries to drive Australian IT investment
Australian enterprise IT spending is forecast to total A$73 billion in 2013, nearly a 5% increase of projected 2012 spending of A$69 billion.
That is according to Gartner’s latest forecast for enterprise IT spending by vertical market, who says the outlook remains steady with half of Australian respondent businesses expecting IT budgets to remain flat in 2013, opposed to 38% who expect them to increase.
Virtualisation is one of the top three IT priority projects for 29% of Australian companies, closely followed by deployment of mobile technologies (24%)
“We strongly expect that mobile will take over to become the highest rated priority IT investment area in 2013,” says Derry Finkeldey, research agenda manager at Gartner.
“Even amongst those organisations planning to tighten IT budgets, or keep them stable, there are plans to invest in mobility.”
Te research group says that while the natural resources sector has been through a period of robust investment, it is the consumer-facing industries that will continue to drive IT investment and innovation over the next five years.
The communications, media and services sector will lead the vertical markets with total spending expected to reach $14.6 billion in 2013, up 5.1% from $13.9 billion in 2012
The banking and securities sector will have the strongest growth in 2013 and is expected to reach $12.8 billion in 2013, up 5.5% from $12.1 billion in 2012. Investment in front office technologies to drive customer engagement are at the fore.
“Australians are savvy and demanding technology customers, and organisations operating in this market need to meet expectations for increasingly contextualized and ‘on-demand’ services,” Finkeldey says.
"Many Australian government departments have achieved efficiencies following the Gershon review, and are now looking to invest back in technologies to improve services to citizens, recognising that new technology investments may help reduce the cost of service delivery, improve operational efficiency or reduce future expenditure."
