Research and advisory firm BMIT’s preliminary estimates of the IT market for 2017 is that it grew by 5.3% to R111 billion driven mainly digital transformation, IT security and automation.
The IT market, it said, is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.2% to reach R149.4 billion in 2021.
The hardware market is under pressure due to declines in PC units and storage, while the networking category continues to perform relatively well. Automating the configuration and management of the network, along with Wi-Fi and software defined networks (SDN) are areas with high market interest.
The packaged software market grew by 10% in 2017, and is forecast to grow to R36.8 billion by 2021. Big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence, virtual reality and blockchain technologies are areas that will drive growth in software and SaaS markets.
Cloud computing democratises emerging technologies that would otherwise be out of reach of smaller companies due to the investment required.
Managed services and custom application development are standout growth IT services categories, despite leading system integrators battling to achieve organic growth in a struggling economy.
Looking forward, IoT and ICT modernisation will drive IT services growth within an ongoing bimodal IT spending framework.
TCO models are being remodeled to maximise benefits and even in the traditionally capex intensive market segments such as financial services, new models are being adopted, while the market in general is demanding savings on opex.
