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Gartner says South Africa’s IT spending to increase by 4.3 percent in 2018

Ahead of next month’s Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2018 in Cape Town, the research firm has detailed several forecasts about South African organisations for this year and 2019.

The latest looks at IT spending in 2018, with Gartner noting that will grow in that regard an at expected rate of 4.3 percent to total an estimated R276.6 billion for the year.

This increase in spending is as a result of local organisations aiming to keep pace with their global counterparts, as South Africa has slid down in recent years, according to Gartner.

The area of data centres in particular is where organisations will be spending the most in 2018, says the research firm.

“South Africa is playing technology catch-up,” notes John-David Lovelock, VP and analyst at Gartner.

“After years of neglecting basic data centre requirements, the country’s IT leaders are now drawing attention to their data centre system spending. Although data centre systems remain the smallest spending IT segment in South Africa, this segment’s year-over-year increase is set to be the most profound in 2018,” he explains.

Drilling a bit deeper into why data centres are a key focus for many, Lovelock says it is driven by a desire to modernise our data centres, as well as a need to overcome a large corporate technology deficit.

One of the more interesting findings from Gartner’s forecast is the amount of spending on communication services. While it still accounts for 43 percent of the country’s IT spending in 2018, the dropping cost of such services has afforded organisations to allocate spending elsewhere.

While the increased IT spend is promising, Lovelock does point out that a greater deal of dynamism is required from South African organisations.

“By ‘dynamic’ we mean organisations that embrace a higher pace of technological change,” he says. 

Those companies that are dynamic in their IT spend can certainly outperform their more conservative counterparts explains Lovelock.

“Dynamic organisations are investing more in cloud, digitalisation and collaboration technology, and these investments are reducing cost, improving efficiency and opening up new business possibilities. They should set an example for many other South African companies that are looking to outperform the country’s economy and their peers,” Lovelock concludes.

South African IT spend, along with several other trends and forecasts for the country will be unpacked and analysed at next month’s Symposium, happening from 17th to 19th September.

 

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]

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