Cloud services impact vertical markets: IDC

Gordon Peters
Thursday, 18 March 2010 14:09

IT Industry - Market

There’s a transformation of Australia’s vertical markets underway this year in the wake of the GFC, with IDC reporting that the market is currently being driven by a growing impact of the cloud services model, an explosion of mobile devices and applications and the continuing rollout of higher-speed networks.

According to IDC in its latest report, this year will be one of modest recovery for the IT and telecommunications industries.

Melissa Martin, senior market analyst, Verticals at IDC Australia, says that in times of global economic uncertainty, “understanding and anticipating shifts in technology markets by vertical industries is critical for maintaining your competitive advantage.

“Suppliers must understand the strategic business issues and pain points of an organisation and the industry in which it operates, in order to demonstrate competence and value."

"Imagine that you have a business problem and are evaluating companies to help you solve it. You can choose a generalist that claims to do everything for every scenario, or an expert that focuses on solving exactly the kind of problem you have, for companies just like yours, with a track record of success. Naturally, the expert, which demonstrates the advantage of vertical market knowledge wins the deal."

Based on IDC's updated forecasts, the business ICT market (hardware, services, software, and telecommunications) in Australia will grow from $45,195 million in 2010 to $51,829 million in 2013.

According to IDC, the top three positions in terms of ICT spending in 2010 remain unchanged, with banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) forecast to spend $9,763 million, government $6,214 million, and communications and media $5,608 million.

However, it is the business services, construction and manufacturing markets that are forecast to by IDC to experience the fastest increase in ICT investment in the next few years - with respective compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) of 5.1%, 5.1%, and 4.7% in the forecast period of 2009 - 2013.

IDC says key predictions for ICT spending are around three main themes:

•    Building the foundation of an intelligent economy (i.e. smart cities and electronic health records [EHR])

•    More consumer-focused IT investments (i.e., retailers using online social commerce and governments focusing on citizen-centric service delivery); and

•    More investments in better analytics (i.e., retailers investing in demand intelligence and business intelligence [BI] to lower inventory costs and transparency boosting data integrity in government

And, for Australia's vertical markets, IDC forecasts in 2010

•    Banking priorities will be Gen Y banking/banking 2.0, risk management and IT security, data management, business intelligence and innovation.

•    Government priorities will be continued government reformation from the Gershon review, driving next gen connectivity / NBN and whole-of-govt initiatives (such as purchasing).

•    Utility priorities include smart meters and the intelligent grid, greater customer engagement and security.

•    Health priorities will be electronic health records, self help / health 2.0 and remote patient monitoring.