Digging Deeper into ICT Trends

In our second take exploring the most important information and communications technology (ICT) trends, we dig deeper into the latest developments in storage, software and business services in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

The ICT market in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is as diverse as the region itself. We’ve already explored the European IT Observatory (EITO) report’s insights into mobility, cloud applications, Big Data, the Internet of Things and social media here.

According to EITO’s findings, the CEE information technology sector contracted slightly overall in the past two years, largely being a result of declines in the Russian market. Across much of the rest of the region, growth remains robust, as for example in Romania (8.2 percent) and Macedonia (7.3 percent).

One of the main drivers of the IT sector continues to be business services, such as business process outsourcing and business consulting, which grew by 14.5 percent year on year. Differing market maturities as well as fluctuation exchange ratescaused uneven growth in IT services across the region. But Central European countries including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia are expected to increase growth slightly in 2016.

Poland, the largest CEE market for IT business services, is projected to expand by 4.1 percent in 2016, according to the report. And the Czech with the third largest IT services market in the region, currently experiences economy rebound and is being driven by demand for new business initiatives using 3rd-party platform solutions such as mobility, Big Data, and analytics.

“The IT and business services markets are also being shaped by the latest trends in digital transformation among private and public organisations. Many current services engagements already include IT security and unified communication and content and document management goals and will increasingly focus on customer analytics, social media, and mobility,” according to EITO.

Storage is another important component for the IT sector in the region, with most countries seeing increases in both market value and terabytes. The report forecasts growth of four percent in 2016, predominately driven by data centre transformations and agility initiatives like cloud delivery preparedness.

“While Big Data and analytics is still a nascent market in the CEE region, those companies that are implementing a big data solution are focusing on core capabilities first and value extraction and process enhancement as the next stage. As such, many organisations in the region will look to expand storage capacity as a first step on the big data journey,” according to the EITO.

Another trend expected to continue throughout 2016 is smaller companies outside the traditional Big Data industries (finance, telecom, and utilities) increasing  expenditure on storage as they develop their own “data lake” capabilities.

EITO theses the software market in Central and Eastern Europe likely to remain subdued, with growth confined mostly to key areas of technology. This includes elements now considered “indispensible,” such as business intelligence and analytic  tools as well as security software.

The regional software market is expected to book 1.4 percent growth by the end of 2016. Countries likely to expand fastest include Bulgaria, Croatia and the Baltic States.

“ERP upgrades and replacements will once again contribute to growth after years of relative stagnation. Similarly, a new era of security spending will kick in as companies come to terms with mobile enablement and BYOD and mobility strategies finally begin to gel,” according to the report.

Keep up with these ICT trends and more with Deutsche Telekom. Nobody knows the CEE region like we do.

Check out the full “ICT Market Report 2015/16” by EITO here:
http://www.eito.com/ICT-Market-Report-2015/16-PDF