Market analyst BMI-TechKnowledge`s Corporate IT User Trends report has found there will be slow but consistent growth of corporate IT spend next year, with companies focusing on retaining and servicing customers and expanding into new regions.
BMI-T principal analyst Althea Bacchialoni says the finding is positive because it is in line with global trends in IT spend and there is still growth within the market.
Bacchialoni says the report surveyed 120 of the top 200 corporate companies in SA. Among other things, it investigates corporates` business processes and solutions, emerging technologies, the current and future software environment, and spend on hardware, software and systems integrators.
"In respect of business processes and solutions, there is little growth predicted, with 50% of the corporations indicating they would continue outsourcing at the same levels. Another 30% stated they would either reduce levels of outsourcing, stop outsourcing, or that they do not outsource and have no plans to do so. A further 22% of the respondents said they would either start outsourcing or expand their current levels," she says.
With many large corporates having done big upgrades of hardware and software before the millennium, Bacchialoni says companies are generally waiting to see a return on investment while hedging their bets against the rand/dollar exchange rate next year.
She says the two key emerging technologies are least-cost routing and the growing need to support companies` mobile workforces.
However, although more employees in the field have laptops and cellphones, Bacchialoni says many of them are not aware of the advantage of GPRS and therefore do not connect to their companies` servers while in the field but rather return to their offices to retrieve or transfer information.
"Vendors often sell corporates technology as opposed to solutions, which means that while companies` workforces are becoming more mobile, they are unaware of how solutions like hotspots can aid them in their work," she says.
In considering the future software environment and the spend on hardware, software and systems integration within companies, Bacchialoni says 70% of the companies are looking to buy best of breed solutions and integrate them as opposed to building their own solutions in-house.
IT spend is generally split equally between hardware, software and integration, she says.
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