Indian CIOs look to invest 20 pc more in IT in 2013-14: Zinnov study

Zinnov, a market expansion and globalization advisory firm, today released a report titled "IT priorities of Indian CIOs for FY2013-14" highlighting key insights from over 50 key IT decision makers from across industries like Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Manufacturing, Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, Retail, Travel and

logistics and others.

The Zinnov study analysed preferences of CIOs and their priorities for IT investments on various parameters such as verticals of investment, size of enterprises, and the budgets on outsourcing for the year 2013-2014 and found some interesting insights.

According to the study, CIOs in India are expected to increase their IT investments at an average of 20 per cent in FY2013-14 as compared to FY2012-13. Verticals such as Manufacturing, Telecom, Retail,

Healthcare and Pharmaceutical will be the key verticals in terms of IT investments in FY2013-14. Manufacturing sector is expected to witness a rise of 29 per cent in absolute IT budget for 2013- 14, followed by Telecom and Retail with an approximate increase of 26 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.

Talking about some key findings, Praveen Bhadada, Director-Market Expansion, Zinnov, said, "With US$30 Bn already in IT investments in India, this is a very positive sentiment coming out from Indian IT decision makers. The last 2 years have been specifically tough for the

domestic IT market and IT vendors would now be eagerly looking for a promising FY2013-14.

India is now starting to gain strategic importance as a market for IT solutions globally and we believe that IT vendors would be able to do better business in the country with the macro-economic environment slowly improving as well.

The study also reflects that IT outsourcing by Indian CIOs' is on the rise as 59 per cent of IT staff is outsourced to third party service providers currently. This phenomena is increasing the demand penetration of third party system integrators.

On the other hand, it read that Modern IT is slowly getting embraced by the Indian enterprises. 2/3rd of the surveyed enterprises showed preference towards investing in some form of modern IT solutions including cloud, big data and mobility.

The study highlighted that Business Analytical tools (including Big Data), Virtualization and Cloud, Mobility, Application Software and solutions and Consolidation of legacy investments and process excellence, would take on priority in FY2013-14. Business Intelligence and Big Data

is of highest priority for over 60 per cent CIOs while Virtualization and Cloud Computing excites over 50 per cent of the Indian CIOs.