Canada’s economic growth, which expanded 2.6% in Q4 2016, continued its positive momentum and expanded at an annualized rate of 2.3% in January 2017, showing some positive signs of development. Its gross domestic product (GDP) for January grew by 0.6%, largely driven by increasing consumption and trade activities. Network and communications equipment, software licenses, application services, and network services are primarily attracting a major proportion of the budget allocations in their respective domains of hardware, software, IT services, and telecommunications.
IoT has emerged as a groundbreaking technology segment. With the benefits of reduced operational time and human intervention, IoT technologies such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), auto ID & mobility technologies, and real-time location tracking, are gaining popularity among Canadian enterprises. Competitive pressures have compelled enterprises to invest in business intelligence (BI) technologies such as analytics and data warehousing/marts to manage and analyze the enterprise data generated across various enterprise touch points in a meaningful manner, and derive business insights from that data.
Furthermore, Canadian enterprises allocated an equal proportion (15%) of their total hardware budget to security and servers in 2016. Meanwhile, the hardware segments of mobile devices, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and storage attracted investments of 11%, 9%, and 9% respectively in 2016.
The report “ICT Investment Trends in Canada” illustrates the core technologies that enterprises are investing in, including IoT, business intelligence, mobility management, and cloud computing. The survey also highlights the approach to purchasing technology adopted by enterprises in Canada.
In particular, it provides an in-depth analysis of the following –
- How ICT budgets are set to change in 2016 in terms of their overall size.
- Allocation across the core elements of IT spend, including hardware, software, services, communications, and consulting.
- Distribution of ICT money in areas such as the networks, applications, service desk, and data centers.
- Which ICT functions Canadian enterprises are interested in outsourcing?
- Canadian enterprises’ investment priorities based on their budget allocations across core technology categories such as IoT, business intelligence, mobility management, and cloud computing.
- Factors that are influencing Canadian enterprises’ investments in each technology category.
- How Canadian enterprises’ IT budgets are currently allocated across various segments within a technology category.
- Canadian enterprises’ distribution of their ICT budget across various segments within a technology category.
- Vendor satisfaction ratings for various core and advanced technology categories.
- Insight into Canadian enterprises’ preferred buying approaches.
- Business and IT objectives that Canadian enterprises are looking to achieve through their IT investment strategies.
- Factors that are influencing Canadian enterprises’ decisions to select an ICT provider.
Companies mentioned in this report: Apple Inc., Bell Canada, Cisco Systems, Inc., Dell Technologies, Inc., EMC Corporation, Google Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, IBM, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE.
Scope
- Enterprises are looking to increase their total ICT budget in 2017, as the Canadian economy has been witnessing stable economic growth and the ongoing expansion in the technological areas will provide much-needed push to the digital transformation of the economy.
- Amongst Canadian enterprises, the decision to purchase cloud solutions is taken solely by the IT department with the dedicated aim of achieving process transformation in their existing business operations.
- ‘Customer satisfaction’ is the most important business objective influencing IT investment strategy among Canadian enterprises.
Reasons to buy
- Understand how the Canadian enterprise ICT landscape is set to change in 2017 to prioritize your target market
- Comprehend how ICT money are being allocated by Canadian enterprises in specific verticals and size bands to improve your market penetration
- Make effective business decisions by recognizing the opportunities within each of the core areas of ICT spend (hardware, software, IT services, telecommunications, and consulting)
- Realign your sales initiatives by understanding the current strategic objectives of Canadian enterprises
- Enhance your market segmentation with the included, detailed breakdown of opportunities within selected technology categories (IoT, business intelligence, mobility management, and cloud computing)
- Prioritize your focus areas by understanding which factors are influencing Canadian enterprises’ decisions when selecting an ICT provider
- Understand the changes in customers’ priorities and identify the business and IT objectives that Canadian enterprises are looking to achieve through their ICT investment strategies