The terror attacks on 11 September last year, which claimed the lives of over 3 000 people, were expected to have profound consequences for economies around the globe, including the ICT industry. In SA, however, the events appear to have had little real impact on the ICT market.
At a recent Unisys conference in France, John Petersen, president of the Virginia-based Arlington Institute, said US government`s fears of a second 11 September had unleashed the greatest investment in technology of all time. Petersen said the consequences had been twofold: an outpouring of the highest-tech products in history, and an erosion of personal privacy to such an extent that no one could be anonymous again.
In contrast, Forge Ahead BMI-T analyst Mark Walker says SA has not seen a major direct impact. "There may have been a knock-on effect in which US focus on specific technologies and usage trends changed somewhat and the South African market followed suit, but we have not seen major market changes that can be directly attributed to the 11 September attacks," he says. "The South African IT and PC industries had already started slowing down before 11 September due to other economic and demand factors."
In the first few months after the attacks, analysts predicted that fear would slow GDP growth, reduce consumer spending and increase spending on security, intelligence and defence.
Forge Ahead BMI-T predicted that in SA the attacks could result in a permanently weaker rand, economic decline in the short-term, slightly higher inflation and delays in privatisation. The forecast also suggested that there could be knock-on positive growth - including increased exports, increased spending on security, storage and disaster recovery, and growth in video conferencing.
In addition to an apparent increase in technology research and development spend in the past year, the global ICT industry has seen increased interest in storage, disaster recovery and data warehousing. However, the impact appears to have been felt most strongly in the US, with ICT markets in Europe, Asia and Africa reporting less of an impact - if any at all.
Walker says there appears to be increased interest in security, but not necessarily a major increase in IT security spending. "Video conferencing, Web casting and Internet-based communication have seen large increases in interest," he says. "This may be partly because of 11 September, which created a greater awareness of the danger of travel, but there is a bigger underlying economic motive. Businesses are increasingly focusing on the bottom line and cost saving."
Walker concludes that any changes in the local ICT market are more the result of evolution within the industry and naturally emerging trends, rather than as a sudden reaction to the terror attacks of a year ago.
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