Despite the still recessive scenario, the need for digital transformation should boost business investments
IDC Brasil, leader in market intelligence, consulting services and conferences with the Information Technology and Telecommunications industries, publishes its forecasts for the sector in 2017. In Brazil, the perspective for the year is of a growth of around 2 ,5% compared to 2016, driven by the IT segment, which should grow 5.7%, while telecom should remain stable, with an increase of 0.4% in the period.
For Denis Arcieri, director general of IDC Brazil, now is the time to resume projects, with a more predictable scenario in the political sphere, and mainly, in the economic context. “There is no more room to postpone transformation and innovation projects and more than 6% of CIOs intend to invest to improve the multichannel delivery strategy in 2017”, he says.
IDC points to the process of digital transformation (DX) as a path of no return for companies in search of efficiency and competitiveness. According to a recent survey, in Brazil just over 10% of companies already invest around 5% of their revenues in innovative technologies. Digital transformation is based on five pillars – leadership, omni-experience, information, business model and source of work, which permeate different technologies and segments of the ICT market that stand out in IDC's forecasts for this year.
“Digital transformation interferes in several aspects, as new technological skills leverage changes and drive new business models, integration of physical and digital products and services, better customer experiences, and more operational and organizational efficiency”, says Luciano Ramos , Research and Consulting Manager for Software and Services at IDC Brazil.
According to IDC forecasts, the Telecom segment will remain stable in 2017 and consistent with the trend of recent years, continuing to digitize, with an increase in data consumption and a reduction in the voice base. The corporate market continues to decline, offset by growth in the residential market. The number of 4G connections will exceed 108 million in Brazil, representing 40% of the total base.
According to André Loureiro, manager of IDC Research and Consulting at IDC Brasil, it is necessary to increase coverage and improve the quality of services to meet demand outside the capitals, where consumption is currently concentrated. The use of OTT (Over the Top) services should continue to grow and generate more traffic, mainly video, as well as “0800 data” and “zero-rating” models, which allow free access to certain services, without data charges . “Currently there are also great opportunities for operators in IT and security, due to services based on the cloud, datacenter and software as a service”, comments Loureiro.
After a troubled year, investments in security should be resumed and expanded in the first semester and exceed US$ 360 million by the end of 2017. The main areas of interest of security managers for new projects are Identity Management (IAM), with 58% of investment intentions, and Correlation of Events (SIEM), with 57% of intentions. A challenge for these executives will be to address complex IoT (Internet of Things) scenarios by hardening and standardizing security practices for connected devices. According to Ramos, today about 79% of security executives do not consider that practices for dealing with Information Security in IoT are well defined in the market.
The Internet of Things (IoT – Internet of Things), by the way, should pick up momentum in the second half, with the definition of a public policy and incentives by the BNDES, comments Pietro Delai, Infrastructure and Telecom Consulting and Research manager at IDC Brazil. The forecast is that the IoT ecosystem in Brazil will double in size by the end of the decade, surpassing US$ 13 billion. The advancement of IoT will be connected with the use of Analytics, essential to transform data into value for business, and with cloud computing, which will be the platform for processing this data – by 2019, about 43% of IoT data will be processed in the Internet. cloud.
Delai also highlights the Blockchain (a distributed database that keeps a permanent and tamper-proof record of transactions) as an important element of digital transformation that will continue at a slow pace. Some projects were developed in 2016 and others will come throughout 2017. “It is a disruptive technology, but its adoption is gradual. The regulatory and compliance challenges are immense in Brazil”, explains Delai.
The Business Analytics Software market will grow 4.8% in 2017, moving US$ 848 million in Brazil. In search of faster and more assertive decisions, organizations will invest in analytical capabilities to bring more and more intelligence and insight to each process in their business. Recognition of the importance of unstructured information, especially that coming from social networks and direct interactions with customers, will bolster Big Data initiatives.
Cognitive/AI technology is also worth mentioning, assuming an important position at the forefront of changing work sources in organizations to support customer relationship and decision-making processes with much more force. According to Luciano Ramos, the expectation is that in the next three years the market will quintuple investments in this technology, still in its initial phase, for intelligent customer service, automated responses, and chatbots.
The Smartphone market, which had a drop in sales in 2016, will pick up steam again in 2017, with a forecast of growth of 3.5% in units compared to last year's volume. The average exchange of handsets occurs every two years and at least 37% of the active installed base was acquired before 2015.
AR/VR (Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality) technology appears with good perspectives in 2017. The IDC forecast is that the Brazilian market will double in units, surpassing the barrier of 100 thousand products. According to Reinaldo Sakis, Consumer Devices Research and Consulting Manager at IDC Brazil, it is estimated that one in 10 of the largest consumer-facing companies will experiment with AR/VR as part of their marketing efforts this year. There are applications in the testing phase in the country in the areas of architecture (building VR models), services (car maintenance with AR), retail (virtual store with AR and VR) and industry (applications of highly complex models).
Until recently seen as a trend, cloud computing arrives in 2017 as mainstream. According to IDC Brasil, the public cloud market is expected to grow 20% this year, reaching US$ 890 million. “There are many successful cases, and companies already know the benefits of the cloud and are overcoming their fears when they realize that providers are increasing security”, says Pietro Delai. Despite the still recessive scenario, companies should invest in the Cloud due to advantages such as cost reduction and faster delivery of solutions.
In the migration of companies to the cloud, a role that is gaining importance is that of Cloud Brokers. “By 2018, 85% environments will be multicloud, combining services from more than one public cloud to meet their business needs, not only because of cost, but also the capabilities of each provider. Brokers are going to become major intermediaries, helping companies make decisions and manage these environments”, comments Luciano Ramos. They are forecast to have a significant share of provider revenues, reaching 50% of these revenues by 2020.
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