Enterprise software market to reach $ 3.92 bn in 2013: Gartner

New Delhi: Despite challenging economic conditions, the enterprise software market in India is projected to reach $3.92 billion in 2013, a 13.9% growth over 2012 revenue of $3.45 billion, according to analyst firm Gartner. In 2013, India will be the fourth largest enterprise software market in Asia-Pacific region.

"Growing maturity of Indian users is an important driver for overall growth. Compounding the demand is the ongoing tendency for greater customer services, drive for IT cost savings, as well as the incorporation of emerging technologies such as mobility, social, cloud and business process management," said Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst at Gartner, in a release.

India also enjoys a rich presence of international software and hardware vendors, including HP, dell, Microsoft, IBM backed by an ecosystem of system integrators, service providers and business partners. The combination of sustainable domestic demand, presence of global vendors, entry of new small vendors and the Nexus of Forces (Gartner defines it as the convergence of new mobile, social, cloud and information computing environments) are the key drivers for high sustainable growth for India.

India is forecast to account for 11.6% of the region's total revenue of $33.73 billion in 2013, the equivalent to 1.32% of the total worldwide software market of $296 billion. By 2017, India's share of the software market in Asia-Pacific is expected to reach 13.11%, representing $6.7 billion in revenue, or 1.74 per cent of the total worldwide software market revenue of $383 billion.

"End users in Asia-Pacific are expecting to increase their spending on application and infrastructure software, with India and China being the most optimistic and leading the way. It is closely followed by Malaysia and Singapore," said Mr. Raina. "Increased budgets in India are expected because of the growing economy, increased globalization, foreign direct investment ( FDI) in retail, aviation, media and ongoing investment in India as a customer service-related outsourcing destination."

In the next five years, priority areas of software spending will include web conferencing; teaming platforms and social software suites; enterprise content management; customer relationship management (CRM) and security. Indian enterprises are looking for cost effective use of technology before adoption of these tools, resulting in the fast growth of these markets.