Given global economic uncertainty, SA’s IT market has performed “remarkably well”, says research and consulting firm BMI-TechKnowledge. And if its research is correct, it will continue to do so, reaching almost R100bn in sales four years from now.

Revenues grew by 10,7% from R62bn in 2009 to R68,7bn in 2010 and BMI-T says it will expand at a compound annual rate of 7,6%, reaching R99,1bn in 2015. It expects the market to expand by 8,5% this year to reach R75,5bn.

The forecasts are published in BMI-T’s “SA IT Market Overview — 2010 to 2015”.

The consumer and small and medium enterprise segments have become important contributors to IT industry revenues as big companies spend more conservatively on technology.

In 2010, the hardware market grew by 7,6%, from R21,2bn in 2009 to R22,9bn. Hardware accounts for a third of the market and is expected to enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 3,5% through to 2015.

BMI-T says bundled computer and data offerings have provided good impetus to the PC industry but smartphones and tablets are likely to cannibalise PC revenues, especially in notebooks.

The SA IT services market will grow from R32,8bn in 2010 to reach R49,8bn billion by 2015. This reflects compound annual growth of 8,7% over the forecast period. Increased spending on IT services can be attributed to upgrades and technology refreshes as many companies delayed these for as long as possible. Also, companies are adopting managed services as complexity increases and skills shortages remain in certain disciplines.

The packaged software market grew by 9,9% in 2010 to R13bn and is expected to show growth of 10% in 2010. Packaged software accounted for 19% of IT spend in 2010. It will grow to R20,8bn by 2015, reflecting compound annual growth of 9,8% over the forecast period.

BMI-T says virtualisation, unified communications and business intelligence are some of the software areas that are driving the growth.

The company expects the storage category to outperform other hardware areas due to virtualisation and cloud computing initiatives. It also expects hosting services to benefit for the same reasons. Increasing adoption of software as a service and collaboration are areas BMI-T says will drive growth in the software market.

It says the IT market is maturing in SA. This can be seen in the continued consolidation in the industry as well as the convergence that is taking place in the telecommunications industry. Cloud computing is on everyone’s lips and it is expected to move rapidly from an “industry push to a market pull”. — Staff reporter, TechCentral