CIOs look to invest 20% more in IT in FY2013-14: Study

NEW DELHI: 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.