Networked infrastructure services to grow 25.8%

Our eFE Bureau in New Delhi

Spending on networked infrastructure services is likely to increase from Rs 753 crore in the fiscal 2000-01 to Rs 947 crore in 2001-02. According to an IDC survey, this is 16.4 per cent of the total IT services spending as against 15.3 per cent recorded last fiscal.

The results of the survey, contained in a report titled ‘Networked Infrastructure Services Market in India: 2001’, indicate that the networked infrastructure services market is expected to see a growth of 25.8 per cent in the current financial year over fiscal 2000-01.

Networked infrastructure services market comprises network consulting and integration as well as network and desktop outsourcing services.

The findings are based on a massive survey by IDC wherein 1,553 personal computer (PC) owning small and medium enterprise and 129 PC owning large organisations, across top 8 cities of India and over a dozen leading IT service providers were surveyed.

The prime reason behind this growth, according to IDC release, is that more and more organisations are deploying inter-organisation and intra-organisation networks.

“This increasing complexity of networks demand services of professional network integrators and consultants to build as well as network and desktop outsourcing service providers to maintain and run the same,” the release says.

The captive IT service departments are no longer able to sustain these challenges, thereby forcing the organisations to outsource these activities.

Banking/finance is one of the biggest adopters of such services. Both private as well as public sector organisations are setting up more and more ATM’s, thus providing customers with any-time-any-branch banking services.

Some other trends identified in the research report include a shift away from simple annual maintenance contract, wherein the responsibility of service provider is limited to repair the specific device that are malfunctioning, towards more complex facilities management.