Strong growth in IT spending in emerging markets

84% of organisations have not cancelled projects

IT hardware spending growth rates among large organizations in emerging markets will surpass those of mature markets in 2009, according to a survey by Gartner.

Despite the economic downturn, 84 percent of these organizations did not cancel any IT projects since October 2008. Furthermore, IT hardware spending in emerging markets is expected to increase for servers, storage, virtualization, cloud computing and green IT.

In February and March of 2009, Gartner surveyed 951 IT professionals within large enterprises who were knowledgeable in hardware topics to gauge the IT issues and budget considerations facing organizations during the current financial crisis.

“These survey results are very important for technology and service providers, not only because they validate where the IT growth trend is occurring in emerging markets, but also because they can guide planning and resource allocation processes,” said Luis Anavitarte, research vice president for emerging markets at Gartner.

Thirty-five percent of respondents said they would increase investments in virtualization, 32 percent said there would be increased investments into green IT, and 7 percent would invest more in cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a new IT delivery model in emerging markets, and while it is gaining momentum, the survey revealed that about 50 percent of organizations in emerging markets have not heard of cloud computing or have heard the term but don’t know what it means. However, in markets like Brazil, 28 percent of channels are already delivering software as a service.

The survey also found that enterprises are focusing their investments on data management with storage and server and audio/video/Web conferencing as the top priorities. Voice over IP also reached a prominent position with respondents as landline and cell communications continue to be generally expensive in emerging markets.