With the increasing adoption customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM), 91% of enterprises in the Middle East are favoring investments in enterprise applications this year, according a survey from Kable.
Findings also show that the demand for virtualization technologies is expected to rise with 51% of enterprises planning to invest in servers, 48% in networks, 46% in desktops, and 41% in storage virtualization, through to the end of 2014.
Mobility is slowly gaining acceptance in the Middle Eastern enterprise market, as 74% of respondents are currently using this technology, and 85% plan to invest in this area.
The survey shows that with the increasing need for enterprises to reduce travel and operational costs and connect with employees/clients who are geographically dispersed, 69% of Middle Eastern enterprises are planning investments in web/video conferencing systems.
Moreover, enterprises' investments in private cloud and hybrid cloud are relatively low, but investments in these areas are expected to grow as 62% and 60% of enterprises are planning to invest in them respectively.
Kable finds that enterprises in the Middle East are increasing their focus on strengthening their security infrastructure after facing a series of attacks on various high-profile multinational firms.
The firm observed that with the increasing complexity of ICT infrastructure, a large proportion of Middle Eastern enterprises are favoring investments in IT systems management.
E-mail archiving is the most widely used content management technology in the Middle East, primarily driven by enterprises' need to meet compliance regulations.
The exponential growth in data generation and the increasing need of companies to make decisions based on actionable insights are also driving the demand for data warehousing/marts and data analytics.
Kable believes that as enterprises continuously look to reduce their impact on environment and minimise IT infrastructure and energy costs, demand for green IT technologies will grow in the coming months.