Digital transformation to boost IT spend in LatAm in 2020
Despite the socioeconomic instability and sluggish growth in Latin America, digital transformation efforts in the region will generate 4,5 percent growth ($48 billion) in 2020, according to IDC.
According to the analyst house, growth in the hardware, software and services market in the region will reach 1,3 percent in 2019. But business in the segment is expected to gather pace next year.
According to the vice president at IDC Latin America, Ricardo Villate, the biggest areas of IT investment in the region will be around the so-called "pillars for the third platform", such as cloud, big data and analytics, mobility and social enterprise, which will concentrate 58% of all investments in 2020.
"The world is approaching digital supremacy - the moment when the digital economy outweighs the size of the non-digital economy, " said Villate, predicting that will happen within the next three years. The analyst house then presented a series of predictions around IT trends for the coming years.
By 2024, IDC estimates that over 40% of all ICT spend in Latin America will go directly towards digital transformation and innovation, growing by 22% annually. This compares with 20% growth in 2018.
The analyst predicts that, within the next couple of years, more than half of companies in Latin America will integrate cloud management through public and private clouds by implementing unified hybrid or multi-cloud management technologies, tools and processes.
More than half of new business applications in Latin America will incorporate artificial intelligence, according to IDC. By 2024, more than 35% of user interface interactions will utilize AI-enabled intelligent video, speech, natural language processing, and augmented reality. In the short term, the analyst also expects that AI spend in Latin America will continue to grow, up 44.2% in 2020.
When it comes to cloud predictions, the analyst predicts that by 2023, the five largest public cloud platforms will account for over 80% of the Latin market. On the other hand, the top 10 software providers focused on a single product or activity will generate nearly 20% of their revenue from platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings.
The analyst also forecasts that in three years, 30% of the top 2,000 companies in Latin America will appoint a Chief Trust Officer. This function will be tasked with oversight of functions including security, finance, human resources, risk, sales, production and legal.
By 2023, IDC predicts that 40% of Latin America's 1,000 largest companies will have "an ecosystem of millions of digital developers." The analyst house says that half of these companies will generate more than 15% of their digital income through their digital ecosystem, or platform.
"In the digital economy, every business has the potential to become a platform, with a community of outside developers around it to extend its value beyond its own direct reach," Villate said.