India IT spending is forecast to grow at 8.8 percent in 2021 to INR 273,776 crore, revealed Coeus Age, a research organization.
The IT spending in India dropped 1.8 percent in 2020 due to the COVID impact, de-growing for the first time ever, Coeus Age said in its annual research report Enterprise Business and IT Priorities 2021.
The research report is based upon inputs of 96 CEOs and 110 CIOs/ IT Heads of large and medium sized Indian enterprises. Inputs were sought regarding their business and IT priorities for 2021.
48 percent of the CEOs expect uncertainty to be present through 2021 and another 21 percent think it may have subsided but may take time to go away. This has implications for the growth scenario that they envisage, 51 percent see the growth looking uncertain or may take another 6 months to return.
CEO’s strategic orientation is built largely with digital at the core. This is evident from their stated strategic priorities where IT Model (54 percent) and Digital Transformation (46 percent) are at the top. This has direct implications on their IT and Digital Spend and the specific mix of that spend.
The impact has been less severe given IT’s importance in helping businesses and individuals survive the crisis. Though the overall spending has marginally dipped in 2020, and the business outlook for 2021 looks uncertain,” said Kapil Dev Singh, CEO of Coeus Age.
IT Spend by the Enterprises
The IT spend by the enterprises (business and government) dipped by 3.5 percent in 2020, primarily due to lower spending on traditional IT.
The spending on commoditized traditional hardware and software products such as PC, server, storage, networking, and in-premise enterprise software has been hit in 2020 due to COVID. It de-grew 10.7 percent and is expected to remain under pressure in 2021, the report said.
Enterprise spend on digital technologies grew 18 percent in 2020, though at a slower pace than previous years. It is expected to be strong in 2021, growing at 23.4 percent.
Adopting digital (56 percent), ensuring security and BCDR (49 percent), and IT operations automation (46 percent) emerge as top 3 enterprise priorities for 2021, Coeus Age report revealed.
The top three enterprise priorities for 2021 of adopting digital, ensuring security and BCDR, and IT operations automation are reflection of the environment that businesses are operating in. The triple imperatives of agility, sustainability, and efficiency with inherent tensions among them has been brought to fore by the COVID crisis.
