2011 was a tolerable year for the domestic IT market. Most sectors saw growth if mostly in single digits or low-double digits. From a macro standpoint, larger events had their impact on the market, particularly in the second half of the year when a combination of tight credit, the falling rupee and a natural disaster in Thailand, all combined to stall momentum and resulted in many deals getting postponed to the next year.
2012 looks more promising, so far at least, with the rupee recovering, the RBI promising not to squeeze credit any further and most vendors having figured out ways and means to deal with the hard drive shortage.
Overarching trends that are likely to have an impact on IT consumption this year would include BYOD that’s likely to become more pervasive this year. With server virtualization having entered the computing mainstream, storage and desktop virtualization will gain ground this year. Cloud computing will pick up though it’s unlikely that 2012 will be ‘the year’ when it sees adoption in a big way in India. Big Data, again, will be piloted this year but significant uptake would happen only 2013 onwards. As data center density keeps rising, we will see vendors trying to address this issue with systems that are designed to run cooler as Dell’s latest server products or Boston’s liquid cooled servers do. Corporate India’s adoption of the tablet has begun but we will have to see how far it goes. On the printing front, sales of multi-function products are growing faster than those of single-function and in inkjets, MFPs already rule the roost. As companies move away from owning devices to outsourcing their printing requirements, MPS is on a tear growing much faster than the overall domestic IT market. The UID project is expected to give a big boost to DMS’ fortunes in 2012.
There’s a lot going on in Indian IT and this issue looks at the scenarios that are playing out in each significant technology vertical.
Prashant L. Rao
Editor
