GEC NEWS WIREIn Middle East and North Africa, approximately $13.2 billion USD to be spent on IT products and services in 2014
Banking and securities companies in the Middle East and North Africa will spend approximately $13.2 billion USD on IT products and services in 2014, an increase of 2.7 percent over 2013 revenue of nearly $12.8 billion USD, according to Gartner. This forecast includes spending by banking organizations on internal IT services (including personnel), IT services, software, data center technologies, devices and telecom services.
Telecom services will be the largest segment in overall IT spending in the banking and securities market at $5.7 billion USD in 2014. This segment is forecast to increase 0.6 percent compared to 2013.
Software and IT services are the fastest growing segments with 9.2 and 8.4 percent increases in 2014, largely due to the expansion strategies of banks across the region and to modernization and replacement projects of the back-office that require a lot of consulting and system integration. Outsourcing is also picking up, as it’s one of the fastest growing segments within IT services.
“The outsourcing of IT, as well as business processes, have become more common across some Gulf countries. This market is still far from mature, but it is already a good start and miles ahead compared to a decade ago,” said Vittorio D’Orazio, research director at Gartner. “Business process outsourcing (BPO) is expected to have a strong growth at 12.6 percent in 2014, while IT outsourcing is forecast to increase 8.5 percent from year.”
“Software spending is being driven by the replacement trend of back-office systems, especially from the larger banks, while newer banks are being created from the scratch which opens a lot of new opportunities for IT vendors, “ said D’Orazio.
