According to a recent Gartner Dataquest report the Asia-Pacific IT spend will grow around 6 Percent in 2002. The report claims that the Asia-Pacific IT spend will surpass $258 Billion in 2002, a 5.8 percent increase from 2001. The Asia-Pacific region is growing faster than the worldwide market. The worldwide IT spend is projected to total $2.3 Trillion in 2002, a 3.4 percent increase from 2001. In 2003, IT spending in Asia-Pacific will show stronger growth, as spending is forecast to increase 9.9 percent.

As per the report Asia-Pacific IT spending is being led by the telecommunications sector (see table), which is set to represent 70.9 percent of IT Spending in 2002. Hardware is the next spending sector with end-user spending forecast at $38.56 Billion for 2002, followed by the rapidly growing IT Services sector at $31.28 Billion.

In the coming 12 months, China's IT initiative priorities will be spread across many areas. Of note however, is the push for enhancing security, as well as spending across IT investments focused on increasing efficiencies and computerization of organizations and its partners. These include building internal Business to Employee (B2E) systems, SCM, CRM, and ERP.

India also places higher priority than China on spending on enhancing corporate security and network infrastructure. However India places a higher priority on network and telecom outsourcing services. This may be a result of the country's strengths in the areas of applications development and the hosting of such solutions. Large scale activity on the BPO front, as more facilities are set up in the country, will also lead to a huge potential demand for IT products and services This means demand for ERP, CRM, and SCM implementation and systems and network implementation services will grow."