Indications are that we are emerging from ‘the recession we had to have’. If that’s truly the case then 2010 could be quite a year for telecommunications investment in infrastructure and systems. According to IDC, two themes will dominate events in the ICT markets in 2010 – recovery and transformation.
In terms of the recovery, IDC predicts that telecommunications spending will experience respectable growth of 3%, driven by a rebound in the IP and data segments in mature markets and strong growth in the mobility sector in emerging economies.
With IT spending returning to pre-recession levels, IDC believes that transformation will impact every corner of the industry in 2010. The most important transformational force in the IT market will be the continuing build-out and maturing of the cloud services and consumption model. The emergence of “enterprise-grade” cloud services will be a unifying theme in this area, with a battle unfolding in cloud application platforms – the most strategic real estate in the cloud for the next 20 years. Significant opportunities will also unfold for public IT cloud services, private clouds, cloud appliances, and hybrid cloud management tools, while cloud APIs will emerge as the new determinant of the cloud partner/solution ecosystem.
The expansion of cloud services, the explosion of mobile devices and mobile applications, the growing popularity of video applications, and more, will all put greater demands on public networks in 2010. Industry players will accelerate their migration toward 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.
Interestingly, other industries will emerge from the recession with their own transformation agendas, and will look to ICT as an increasingly important means for achieving the new objectives.
The transformation agenda will likely drive a fresh round of mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships as vendors pursue profitable ICT and business solutions and power positions in the cloud. Watch out, 2010 could be a real roller coaster ride.