By Eleanor Reader
Analyst firm IDC is heralding a new era for the Australian ICT sector, revealing cloud, mobility, social business and big data have driven their top 10 predictions for 2013.
Research director for IDC Australia, Matthew Oostveen, says ICT professionals must find a bridge between the two big forces affecting spending in 2013.
“On the one hand, they are faced with a dangerously unbalanced European economy, a stagnant United States, and recent data pointing to the flattening of Chinese growth, which are negatively impacting Australian organisations,” he said.
“On the other hand, there is the excitement that new technologies bring: the freedom of mobility, the creative problem solving of big data, the interaction that comes with social business, and the disruption brought about by cloud computing.”
In response, IDC expects Australian businesses to take a cautionary stance when considering ICT spend in 2013. They also anticipate significant changes in how suppliers connect with Australian businesses, how workers will connect to the enterprise, the types of technologies businesses acquire and even how consumers shop.
IDC’s top 10 predictions (in no particular order) for the Australian ICT market, contained in the forthcoming report Australia ICT 2013 Top 10 Predictions, are:
- Omni-channel retailing will drive the growth in expansionary ICT spending from social local mobile applications.
- Business analytics as a service will transform small and medium businesses.
- Skill shortages leading to growth in automation and virtualisation as part of infrastructure services.
- On-premises computing will catch a second wind with converged systems.
- More than half of ICT purchasing decisions will involve a line of business executive.
- The corporatisation of the consumer.
- IT spending on hardware will not see resurgence, but mobile devices will open up a window of growth opportunity.
- Mobile device management disappears and IT managers to reconsider security perimeter-based security.
- Unified communications and collaboration extends to enterprise social networks.
- Machine to machine presents itself as a real growth opportunity for mobile operators.
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