Gartner says MEA IT infrastructure spending will reach $3.5 billion in 2014

IT infrastructure spending, comprising storage, server, and enterprise networking equipment, in the Middle East and Africa is forecast to reach $3.47 billion, a 4.1 percent increase from 2013, according to Gartner, Inc.

“CIOs in the Gulf are beginning to prepare their enterprises to stay relevant in the digital business era, and they will continue to invest in technologies such as  mobility, cloud, social and analytics,” said Mary Mesaglio, research vice president at Gartner. “In 2014, we expect a lot of digital business and innovation to be driven by the convergence of these forces in the Gulf.”

IT infrastructure spend in this region will be driven by data centre modernization efforts, coupled with new data centre build out, by local, as well as international companies. Server is the biggest component of this infrastructure market, accounting for US $1.3 billion (US dollars) in 2014, and it’s expected to reach US $1.54 billion in 2017 (see table 1).

Table 1: Middle East and African IT Infrastructure Revenue by Technology ( US$ Millions)

Source: Gartner (February 2014)

“Private cloud, security and mobility are key drivers for the infrastructure spend in the Gulf region”, said Naveen Mishra, research director at Gartner. “The mid-market in the Gulf is expected to fuel infrastructure spending, primarily by focusing on virtualization and the public cloud.”

“Security continues to be a key barrier for enterprises while many consider mainstream cloud adoption. Desktop virtualization, managing storage growth, and integrated systems are other key priorities that will influence infrastructure spending in this region during 2014,” added Mr. Mishra.

Key trends facing the IT industry will be discussed in more detail at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2014 in Dubai, April 1-3.

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