Indian enterprises will be cautious on tech spending: IDC

"As Indian enterprises will take a cautionary stance on tech spending during the new year, ICT vendors will have to invest in changing their mindset to focus on strategic investments like geo expansion, mid-market focus and cloud enablement," IDC research director Venu Reddy said in the report India ICT 2013.

Although new technologies like virtualisation, cloud and mobility would enable enterprises to enhance their IT infrastructure in a phased manner, Reddy said the investments would be determined by priorities like customer satisfaction, employee productivity and faster global traffic manager (GTM).

"With technology becoming the lifeline of any enterprise across verticals, especially retail, manufacturing, energy and finance, investments will be driven by the ability to delivery value and reduce cost of ownership in the long term," Reddy pointed out.

In the retail sector, investment in optimisation and customer engagement is expected to grow revenue by at least three percent, while the manufacturing sector will focus on driving productivity through social business, big data, cloud and mobility.

Investments in the energy sector will be on extended B2B networks, product optimisation, visibility and responsibility.

"In the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector, investments will be in the enterprise data management to comply with regulations and lower operating costs without compromising on service levels.

"Similarly, financial institutions will be depending on analytics solutions to improve operational performance," Reddy noted.

The report predicts that IT vendors will continue to target tier-two and tier-three cities for expanding their presence in the tertiary market, while enterprise applications and business processes will shift to the cloud to link devices and users.

Similarly, telecom providers will focus on customised data plans based on usage pattern analysis and enterprises will look for an integrated IT infrastructure management.

"Many enterprises that have been holding back on hardware and software investments will partially reopen their purse strings this year," Reddy added.

IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy.