Govt IT spend to grow 9.5% in 2017: Gartner

PUNE: The government IT spend in India is forecast to be at $7.8 billion in 2017, an increase of 9.5% over 2016, according to IT consultancy Gartner, Inc. This forecast includes spending on internal services, software, IT services, data center systems, devices and telecom services. Government comprises state and local governments and national government.

The software segment includes enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), customer resource management (CRM), desktop, infrastructure, vertical specific software and other application tools. The software segment is expected to grow 15.7% in 2017 to reach $1 billion. Desktop will be the fastest growing segment with 16% growth in this category.

IT services (which includes consulting, software support, business process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, implementation, and hardware support) is expected to grow 14.6% in 2017 to reach $2 billion, making it the largest segment within the IT spending category.

“Government spending on IT services will total $2,093 million USD in 2017, a 15% increase from 2016,” said Moutusi Sau, principal research analyst at Gartner. “The IT services market is led by growth in business process outsourcing."

Spend on devices, printers, copiers, MFPs, mobile devices, PCs and tablets, is estimated to grow 12.7% to reach $917 mn.