Mobile data services, external controller-based storage systems, business IT services and enterprise application software will all contribute to healthy growth in information technology (IT) in China, according to a new report from Gartner.
Gartner said IT spending by Chinese end users (consumers and enterprises) grew by nearly 14% in 2012, and forecasts that spending growth will slow to 7.3% this year. Gartner expects IT spending in China to grow from US$301 billion in 2012 to US$323 billion in 2013, offering substantial opportunities to technology and service providers.
"The consumerization of IT will continue to have a strong impact in China, which has the world's largest number of Internet users and mobile handsets and is the largest PC market and the third-largest hardware market," said Matthew Cheung, research director at Gartner. "In addition to coping with the global financial downturn, Chinese CIOs face the challenge of developing and executing dynamic IT strategies to address this trend and other changes in market dynamics as new technologies and service providers quickly enter the Chinese market."
"Historically, Chinese enterprises have seen more tangible value in acquiring IT hardware than software packages and services," said Cheung. "In the past five years, however, software investments have been catching up as local application vendors have found a place in most enterprises' architectures and end users have started to realize more tangible benefits of using software packages in their environments."
"With most markets in a high-growth phase, China's ICT industry has an increasing number of domestic providers, in addition to a number of international vendors. We believe that IT end users should benefit in terms of quality and price of products and services," Cheung said.
Enterprises in China are also expected to face challenges when it comes to finding experienced and skilled staff to implement new business systems, due to local competition from other enterprises and from application and technology service providers that are also growing. Overall, Chinese enterprises will continue to need to pay more attention to implementation risks - especially competition for good ICT skills, internal readiness and vendor-related risks - as they attempt to take advantage of new technologies and automate more business functions.
Gartner has identified five technologies as providing transformational benefit:
Big data: While this is a broad concept, it can affect how enterprises manage their information, and it has impacts from analytics to data storage.
Enterprise mobility application services in China: As an entry from mobility and application services, this will impact many organizations that need or plan to have a mobile strategy.
PaaS: The PaaS market has already been leveraged by major ISPs, and with the recent additions of Microsoft Azure, the technology can address most of new mobile, e-commerce and social application requirements.
Smart city framework, China: The framework provides a guideline for transformation of Chinese enterprises and cities that result in broad implications for technology adoption, process innovation and cultural change.
Machine-to-machine communication services: These are seen as transformational for telecom-related and smart-related technologies, indicating that China is developing in line with global trends and new concepts such as the Internet of Things.
Of the many technologies identified as being of high benefit, the following are especially noteworthy:
Extreme low-energy servers are a new entry to the Hype Cycle and will be important in China because they can help in the reduction of energy consumption.
Software as a service (SaaS) will give Chinese enterprises opportunities to adopt contemporary and automated business best practices quickly and with limited capital expenditure, to be more agile, scalable and competitive, and even to operate virtually in a global environment as part of China's growing adoption of cloud computing. Cloud computing is a buzzword that has aroused much hype in the Chinese market with the government's strong push to form an industry and ecosystem.
Custom application development and packaged implementation services using external service providers to enable quicker rollout of systems that improve productivity, business agility and competitiveness. These services include CRM, supply chain execution, supply chain planning and BI platforms.
With China playing an important role in the global telecom market, Chinese enterprises and consumers will benefit from many other emerging technologies, notably the maturing of IPv6. IPv6 is being adopted faster in China than in the rest of the world because some areas the telecommunications infrastructure is growing faster in China than elsewhere.
