Opening some knots on IT Purse strings at C-Change

JAIPUR, INDIA: New verticals, new scale-strata and new orientation to budgets seem to be a quick peek into how IT wallets would open in the near future.

Expect that mindsets would change in their subtle yet impactful way, be it for the enterprise spender or the vendor.

A latest research mapped the perception of technology vendors' willingness to discount where 30 per cent respondents pointed at no change, and 39 per cent observed no aggressive discounting. This could indicate there is no desperation in the market and a wait continues for some big changes expected in the country.

As to the mind-set of IT spending, 70 per cent have expected IT to stay strategic.

These and many other insights were shared at a session on ‘Trends in Current and Future ICT adoption amongst Indian Enterprises as a CeIT (CMR Enterprise IT)report, where Pradeep Gupta, CMD, CyberMedia India Ltd unveiled some notable shifts as seen in the survey and also spelt out their meanings for the industry and the CIOs.

He covered many areas and angles as he talked about the report which covered respondents from across many areas and sectors and used face-to-face interviews for an in-depth peek. The top 3 external IT spending projects saw security dominating the list. Unfortunately despite all the attention security is getting, spends have not come through, so it's a good news that spend-wise a change is happening, Gupta observed.

Some 21 per cent showed inclination for Cloud and that iterates that it's a trend on a high stage now.

In another interesting peek on factors influencing choice of service providers it was seen that price has been moving to number one position as a factor which is a stark change from what's been the tendency to share generally. But pressure to show returns is clearly tangible in this way as IT spenders admit how pricing is a strong implication point.

This and many other elements are marking a significant shift in the way CIOs are planning their strategy and ensuring a strong and stable infrastructure planning in the imminent future, he pointed out.

In short, new verticals are surfacing on spending patterns, hardware-related spend is going down in favour of services. IT outsourcing and SI is dominating software spends, encapsulated Gupta.

Cautious approaches in Budgets and ROI adherence palpable. Virtualisation, security, ERP solutions, analytics etc., would be hot, but in terms of existing deployments, virtualisation and server side IT is still visible.

"Interest from Small-sized companies specially with SaaS apps is remarkable and infrastructure upgrade is topping the minds of CIOs now," he said.

Responding to a question on the conflicting irony between need for security spends and rise of social media from a CIO in the audience, Gupta argued that the situation is no more binary in nature because the customer leaves no choice for companies to pick. That implies that connecting to customers has to be agile and at the same time security has to be strengthened simultaneously.