During the annual budgeting season, a lot of discussion around the future, trends, opportunities and threats are analysed. An event in the form of COVID-19 is rarely envisioned. Hence, there is going to be an impact on all the well made plans.
With respect to IT Spend: There will be a balancing of the books with respect to the budgets. There would be reduction in the certain aspects of discretionary spend particularly in the experimental space such as AR, VR and certain AI platforms. On the other hand, there will be an increased spend on Cloud, Data, Infra and Security.
As we look at the market place, we can see a few promising trends emerge. The impact of the “Lock Down” will manifest itself through several businesses focussing heavily on digital platforms to connect with their customers. The Omni-channel access to the customers will drive spend especially as life returns to normalcy after the COVID-19 induced lockdown is lifted. We would not be surprised if the spend actually rises as organizations double-down on the top priorities in the New Normal that we are living in.