Recovery and transformation will be the dominant themes in the IT and telecommunications markets in 2010, predicts research firm IDG, as a result of improving outlook in the global economy.
"In last year's predictions, we talked about how a slow global economy would act like a pressure cooker on the IT market, speeding the development and adoption of new technologies and business models," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.
"What's different about 2010 is that the economic recovery will release some of the pressure on spending, enabling a number of transformational tipping points to be reached in a year of economic upswing."
IDC predicts that worldwide IT spending will grow by 3.2% in 2010 to $1.5 trillion. Hardware and software spending will each grow by 2-4%, while half of overall growth will come from emerging markets. As IT spending returns to 2008 levels, IDC believes that the transformation will be felt on every corner of the industry. However, the biggest change in the IT market will be the continuing build=out and maturing of cloud services and consumption model.
Cloud services will be the focal point of the growth, primarily in cloud application platforms, IT cloud services, private clouds, cloud appliances, and hybrid cloud management tools. Cloud APIs will set the tone for the combination of cloud partner-solution ecosystems.
Mobile devices will put pressure on the PC industry as end-users and developers increasingly adopt mobile computing. By year end, IDC predicts that more than 1 billion mobile devices will be accessing the Internet, boosted by the growing popularity of smartphones. The popularity in mobile computing and upgrades in mobile devices will give way to more mobile applications.
On personal computing, netbooks will remain popular. This will in turn give birth to optimized solutions that meet the performance and usability of these devices.
To support cloud services and accelerated growth in online content and social media access, IDC expects telecommunications service providers to accelerate their migration towards converged IP platforms, expand their managed services footprints, and transform their service delivery platforms and business models to support the growing wholesale, connected devices, and machine-to-machine (M2M) opportunities.
Other transformations in the IT industry that IDC predicts include mash-ups of applications that leverage social and collaborative networks that bring new capabilities to customers and suppliers; increased role for IT to enable other industries achieve their own transformative agenda as they emerge from the recession; fresh mergers, acquisitions, and partnership among vendors; and a focus on reducing carbon emissions.
