30 percent of Indian businesses plan to use external financing to fund technology purchases, according to a survey by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Cisco Capital.
Manufacturing and ICT-enabled services companies are more mature users of external finance in India, followed by professional and financial services.
Multinational companies and large organizations prefer captive lessors for external funding.
In India, the CFO was the most influential decision maker for IT purchases; while in China the leading decision maker was the CEO or the CFO. A combination of the CTO/CIO and CFO made the financing decision in Australia.
The top three ICT purchases that required financing were server hardware, storage hardware and network equipment, with hardware being financed over 40 per cent of the time in India.
Over CY 2013, leasing users expect an increase in the use of external financing for storage and server hardware.
The proliferation of end-user devices is the major technology transition expected to drive an uptake of vendor financing, followed by collaboration solutions like video and audio conferencing and online video.
Seventy-nine percent of all Indian organizations agreed that the ability of a vendor to provide financing for their products and services was a factor in the technology purchase decision-making process.
A majority of Indian organizations (59 percent) prefer to deal with a combination of technology vendor and the channel partner when sourcing external financing.
The survey, conducted across India, Australia and China, revealed the diversity in technology purchase strategies across the region. The survey also highlighted major technology transitions expected to propel growth in the use of vendor financing.
The top three transitions were the proliferation of end-user devices and the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, workplace collaboration enabled by unified communication solutions, and the growing uptake of online video as well as Web conferencing and telepresence.
