INDUSTRY WATCH prominent use cases to include freight monitoring , smart grid electricity , manufacturing operations , production asset management , and remote health monitoring .
Given these applications , it makes sense that the biggest spenders on IoT in 2017 are tipped to be the region ’ s manufacturing , transportation , utilities , and healthcare verticals .
4The fourth major trend identified by IDC is the fact that maintaining security continues to be the numberone challenge facing the region ’ s CIOs , with spending on security solutions by META organisations set to cross the $ 2 billion mark in 2017 .
The contribution of IT software and services to the overall IT industry is expected to increase due to their faster growth rate over hardware .
IDC expects threat management , compliance remediation , security management , automatic malware removal , and mobile security solutions to be the top five investment priorities in this area .
5Finally , IDC anticipates a more pragmatic focus from the region ’ s Smart City initiatives in 2017 , with governments and their partners looking to enable innovative transportation , citizen engagement , and emergency response services that drive tangible improvements in the lives of their residents .
South Africa at $ 10.5 billion , Saudi Arabia at $ 7.5 billion , UAE at $ 6.2 billion , Turkey at $ 5.6 billion , remain the top four IT markets across Africa , Middle East and Turkey region .
The growth rate of the ICT Africa , Middle East , Turkey industry is expected to improve from 1.6 % in 2016 to 3.6 % in 2017 YoY .
Communications , finance , government , manufacturing , are the biggest spenders on vertical market applications . Healthcare , transportation , utilities are the fastest growing for spending on vertical market applications .
Slowdown in growth from 2015 to 2018 is across IT and telecom industry .
South Africa is the biggest market for spending on public cloud , followed by Turkey , UAE , and Saudi Arabia . www . intelligentcio . com INTELLIGENTCIO
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