CIOs look to invest 20 percent more in IT, Study

The domestic IT sector is set to accelerate adoption of new IT systems in the coming fiscal. Emerging verticals such as retail, healthcare along with manufacturing & telecom will drive the IT budget growth this year, according to a study by Bangalore based research firm Zinnov. 

The Zinnov study titled 'IT priorities of Indian CIOs for FY2013-14' gathered insights from more than 50 IT decision makers from across industries like banking, financial services, insurance, manufacturing, healthcare & pharmaceuticals, retail, travel & logistics and others. 

Key findings included the following priorities of the CIOs: 

Business analytics: CIOs continue to invest in business analytics with high uptake of big data within manufacturing, energy & utility, media & marketing verticals. 

Virtualization & cloud: CIOs show i ncreased preference towards virtualization and cloud (both private & public) based on criticality of use case. 

Enterprise mobility: 50% CIOs consider mobility indispensable and find it very relevant for customer facing roles and consumer applications 

Application software: Expanding ERP capabilities is high on the CIO agenda. CRM and SCM to maintain demand in FY2013-14. 

Consolidation of solutions: CIOs are also planning on integration of existing enterprise application software, ERP solutions, and BI tools to derive business benefits from legacy IT investments. 

The Zinnov study, according to a release, analysed preferences of CIOs and their priorities for IT investments on various parameters such as verticals of investment, size of enterprises, and the budgets on outsourcing for the year 2013-2014 and found some interesting insights. 

According to the study, CIOs in India are expected to increase their IT investments at an average of 20% in FY2013-14 as compared to FY2012-13. Verticals such as manufacturing, telecom, retail, healthcare and pharmaceutical will be the key verticals in terms of IT investments in FY2013-14. Manufacturing sector is expected to witness a rise of 29% in absolute IT budget for 2013- 14, followed by Telecom and Retail with an approximate increase of 26% and 18% respectively.