IT spend in UAE to grow at 12% annually

The total spend on IT infrastructure by businesses (public or private) in the UAE is expected to grow by 12 per cent this year compared to last year, a senior official has said.

“The total IT expend in the UAE is about $4.8 billion annually, and by the end of this year this is expected to go up by 12 per cent compared to last year,” Yasser Zeineldin, CEO, eHosting Datafort, Dubai, the managed IT and advisory services providing firm, told Emirates 24|7.

This expenditure also includes expenditure on managed IT services, he said, which is maturing in the UAE as well as in the GCC region.

The expenditure on managed IT services by businesses in the UAE is also expected to be roughly between Dh600m and Dh700m this year, up 20 per cent than last year, he added.

Managed services generally means selectively outsourcing some aspects of IT functions (such as databases, services, storage, applications, security etc) to third-party managed services provider for monitoring and maintenance.
The difference between managed services and full outsourcing is that while full outsourcing takes over a company’s entire IT operation, managed services is a very selective approach, he said.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia are the largest markets in the GCC region for managed services, he added.

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