Indian IT to be resilient during turbulent times

NEW DELHI: Indian IT market would exhibit strong resilience during unstable times, says Springboard Research, an IT market research and advisory firm.

The research stated that India’s IT spending is expected to grow at an annual rate of 14.1 per cent in 2009, down from 18.1 per cent growth in 2008, said a press release.

According to Springboard’s latest executive brief released today, titled “India IT Market Predictions 2009”, IT spending in verticals like retail and real estate would be hardest hit, while the advent of 3G and a largely protected financial system would help sustain growth in the telecom and banking/finance verticals respectively.

“With the economic crisis expected to further worsen, we will see IT spending affected in India – although not to the same degree as in North America, Europe and other Asia Pacific markets like Japan, Australia and Korea,” said Manish Bahl, research manager, Springboard Research.

He added that on the other hand, the country had delivered impressive growth and profits to both leading multinational and domestic vendors last year, and for many of these vendors, their Indian revenues grew more than 50 per cent in 2008.

Springboard predicts the top 10 trends that would shape the IT market in the India in 2009 are:

1) Arrival of 3G unlocks enormous opportunities for IT vendors

2) Cost concerns would drive a key focus on IT infrastructure consolidation

3) Economic pressures to drive SMBs towards outsourcing and SaaS

4) Start-ups and smaller firms become more important accounts for IT vendors

5) Virtualization would gain traction in medium and large sized enterprises

6) IT outsourcing would be seen as a catalyst to HR retention and cost reductions during the economic squeeze

7) Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry to transform further with new technologies

8) Online advertising markets to gain momentum with the emergence of niche social networking sites and regional portals

9) The Public Sector would buoy IT spending

10) Green IT would be fueled by cost efficiency benefits

Indian enterprises would be more focused on their “core” areas to foster specialization and this would increase their dependence on technology to reduce operational expenditure, the release said.

“While major multinational vendors continue to view India as a critical growth market, we expect other US-based firms to amplify their resource influx into the region and set up special teams to focus only on emerging markets such as India,” Bahl said.