Indian IT infrastructure mkt to reach $2.02 bn; public cloud gains traction

The Indian IT infrastructure market – which includes server, storage, and networking equipment – will total $2.02 billion in 2015, a 3.3 percent increase from 2014, according to Gartner. Top technology prioritites of Indian CIOs in India are BI/Analytics, mobile, cloud, Infrastructure & Data centre, ERP, digitalisation. “The Indian infrastructure market will have a modest growth, but lot more excitement is expected to happen in this market,” Naveen Mishra, research director, Gartner said. “The market will witness investments primarily fuelled by data center modernisation initiatives to drive uninterrupted and better quality of service,” he added. Indian enterprises will focus on creating integrated data centres for optimising existing IT assets and delivering non-stop IT services to business. This will drive greater emphasis on public cloud, Devops and software defined networking. Within the Indian IT infrastructure market, server revenue is forecast to reach $658 million in 2015, a decline of 4.7 percent from 2014. However, the server market is expected to return to positive growth in 2016 when revenue is forecast to total $698 million. Enterprise networking is the biggest segment with revenue expected to touch $944 million in 2015. “The whole notion of last-mile connectivity is driving the enterprise networking segment,” Mishra said. With increased focus on mobility and big data activities in India, software defined networking is getting discussed and adopted amongst Indian enterprises. The storage market is on pace to reach $426 million this year, a 7 percent increase from last year. Storage modernisation and consolidation, backup and recovery, and disaster recovery are some of the key drivers to this market, and they are likely to remain relevant drivers over the forecast period through 2018. “SAN clearly leads the Indian storage market, while flash is growing rapidly,” Mishra added.  He also highlighted some of the key drivers that will shape the future of data centres in India, which include: data centre modernisation; cloud investments will see significant uptake. Private cloud will lead, followed by public cloud; software-defined everything is gaining traction; automation and orchestration becoming high priority for Indian leaders; and increased focus on business continuity.