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In IDC's annual end user survey, "IT Trends and Expenditure in Ireland 2002," the company says that growth for this year will be modest by recent Irish standards at just 2.8 percent. But spending on IT in 2003 will be up by 8.4 percent and IDC claims that Ireland will return to double-digit growth of 12 percent in 2004.
For 2006, overall enterprise IT spending is predicted to be around USD3.4 billion, IDC claims. John Gilsenan, IDC consultant analyst, explained to ElectricNews.Net that Ireland was severely affected by the US economic downturn of 2001, partially due to its dependency on IT exports. "However, the economy had been overheating and inflation was rising as capacity was reached in terms of labour supply, so a cooling off in growth had some benefits," he said.
"But everything is relative to what went before," he continued. "The falloff in hardware hit Ireland harder than it would have affected other European countries. Ireland is also exposed to weaknesses in corporate spending because of the relatively large number of big companies (over 500 employees) here, which are still forecasting a slow recovery. Smaller firms are more optimistic."
Nevertheless, other figures from the survey show that a high proportion of Irish organisations are planning to implement new storage solutions this year. According to IDC, 40 percent of Irish organisations with 1,000 or more employees have plans to implement storage area networks, while 20 percent of those with 500-999 employees are planning network assisted storage solutions in 2002. As a result, IDC believes spending on fibre channel storage will be up 53 percent this year on last year and 31 percent per annum on average in the time period 2002 to 2006.
Gilsenan also highlighted positive figures in the IT services sector, which will grow by 10 percent this year. The survey shows that on average 15 percent of respondents intend to outsource their overall IT function in 2002. "This seems high in the light of the previous resistance of the Irish market to outsource IT. It could be a turning point in the outsourcing market," Gilsenan claimed.
Finally, IDC's study revealed that 26 percent of Irish companies have plans to invest in CRM solutions this year. Following close behind are e-commerce and e-security with 20 percent and 16 percent of Irish companies respectively intending to implement these solutions.
The report is based on data from IDC's annual survey of more than 300 IT procurement decision makers in Irish commercial and government organisations and public sector institutions on their views and attitudes to IT, as well as IT spending intentions. To launch the survey, the company is holding an event on Thursday, 13 June 2002 at 2.00pm in the Herbert Suite of the Berkeley Court Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.
For more information visit ENN's events section.
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