Mexico. Business technology trends in the hardware, software, services and telecommunications markets have evolved as top executives drive corporate acquisitions and lead the digital transformation agenda of their organizations.
With that, IT spending worldwide is projected at $3.5 trillion for 2017, a 1.4% increase compared to 2016, according to Gartner's latest market study and revealed by the company Comstor. This growth rate is lower than the 2.7% projection, and in part that is due to the increase in the value of the US dollar.
The strength of the U.S. dollar has cut $67 billion from our IT spending projection in 2017, according to John-David Lovelock, vice president at gartner. The projection is that the scenario of the rise of the dollar will complicate a little the turnover of north-american multinational IT providers in 2017.
Global IT Market Development
Despite this small hurdle, according to Gartner, business and IT executives around the world are seeking information and guidance on market challenges and opportunities, in order to base critical investment decisions on proven methods.
For example, the market segment focused on data center systems is forecast to grow by 0.3% in 2017. This growth is already better than that of 2016, but the segment is going through a slowdown. That's because there's a change in who's buying servers and who's selling them.
Companies are moving away from buying physical servers to investing in cloud servers. That has created a reduction in server expenses, which is directly impacting the data center systems segment in general.
Driven by strength in mobile phone sales and a small improvement in sales of printers, computers and tablets, global device spending is due to grow 1.7% in 2017, reaching $645 billion. Despite that, the tablet market continues to decline, as replacement cycles remain.
Overview of spending with IT services.
The global IT services market in 2017 should grow 2.3% in 2017, down from 3.6% growth in 2016.
Gartner reports that modest changes in IT service provision this quarter may be determined as adjustments in certain regions as a result of potential anticipated direction changes to U.S. policy.
The business-friendly policies of the new administration of the U.S. federal government are expected to have a slightly positive impact on the U.S. implementation services market, as government agencies will need to significantly increase their spending on IT infrastructure in the coming years.
However, it is necessary to point out a discrepancy in the IT services market: according to a recent study conducted by Everest Group, almost 48% of customers are dissatisfied with their service providers, a rather worrying statistic for this industry. About 25% have stated that they feel very dissatisfied. These results represent glaring gaps in the IT services sector.
In the study, companies indicated discrepancies in various service areas: digital applications, cloud and infrastructure services. In addition, it also presents companies' views on their top investment priorities in IT technology and services. But, what is most striking in the report is that only 10% of the interviewees have stated that they feel extremely satisfied. That means service providers are behind when it comes to making strategic alliances for businesses.
Currently, innovation is the main need and market suppliers must differentiate themselves based on offers outside the standard offered. Customers expect end-to-end added value in IT service delivery. That makes a lot of sense, because from an investment point of view, application modernization, automation and digital security are seen as drivers of ROI in the short term and it can happen that companies prefer to invest in that first.
IT service providers need to change business models to cater to the next generation of technology-driven enterprises. They must associate the provision of services with the results of the business, jointly developing innovation models. Promoting standardization, cost-benefit ratio and process improvements will be imperative for work that generates added value to the client.
