Your job's going to Asia, in a good way

IT spending in APAC will grow by nearly eight per cent over the coming year to $743bn, with Western markets set to benefit eventually as successful Asian firms expand and hire abroad, according to analyst outfit Gartner.

The firm forecast spending in APAC to increase 7.8 per cent year-on-year in 2013, more than double the worldwide average of 3.7 per cent.

Although growth in Australia (3.2 per cent to $75.3bn) and New Zealand (2 per cent to $8.6bn) is a little disappointing, they still top ailing Europe whose average growth forecast is just 1.4 per cent.

Moreover, the West will in time reap the rewards of a strong APAC, as double digit growth in countries such as China and India propel home grown success stories to greater international expansion.

“Consequently, these organisations will be responsible for major hiring of IT professionals to support their growth at a time when Western companies will still be coping with the impact of the economic crisis,” Gartner SVP Peter Sondergaard said in a canned statement.

One area of stellar growth in the IT industry set to accelerate demand for newly skilled professionals is Big Data.

By 2015 it will generate 4.4 million new IT roles worldwide, with just under a quarter of these coming from APAC, although skills and education development are essential to plug the knowledge gap, Gartner said.

“You need to understand how to deal with hybrid data, meaning the combination of structured and unstructured data, and how you shine a light on ‘dark data.’ Dark data is the data being collected, but going unused despite its value,” said Sondergaard.

“Leading organisations of the future will be distinguished by the quality of their predictive algorithms. This is the CIO challenge, and opportunity.”

Gartner also predicted the continued growth of BYOD in the enterprise, claiming that by 2016, half of all non-PC devices will be purchased by employees. ®