Gartner’s Sondergaard Predicts 6.3% Rise in IT Spending in MENA in 2012

Peter Sondergaard of Gartner Analysts

Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president of Gartner Analysts announced at the Gartner CIO Leadership Forum 2012 that the MENA region can expect 6.3 percent growth in IT spending in the coming year.

Sondergaard explained during the forum, held in Dubai February 27-28 that the Middle East and Africa enterprise IT spending could climb to as much as 70 billion Euros in 2012, across all industry markets, an increase of 66 billion Euros over the 2011 figure.

"In 2011, the growth rates across the Middle East and Africa region were in double-digit figures. As a consequence, 2012 will be hampered more, and top growth rates will be limited to those countries that didn't exploit their economies last year," said Peter Sondergaard. "Four forces of technology: cloud, social media, mobile and information, will equally impact IT organizations and technology providers in the Middle East. However, we believe that the market for cloud services, the lack of skills to deal with big data and the explosion in information could limit changes in organizations in the Middle East."

"Building industrialized IT capabilities will have CIO's across the Middle East increasingly turn to outsourcing of infrastructure and application environments. We believe that there will be substantial opportunities to drive down costs of outsourcing contracts that tend to be the most expensive globally. CIO's will need to build sourcing and vendor management skills to counter ensure better prices," added Mr. Sondergaard, who is also the global head of research at Gartner.