According to AT&T, Asian companies are leading in IT investment, surging past their European rivals.
Research that was published by Insead reveals that Asia-Pacific companies are spending the majority of their IT budgets on the newest technologies, including mobile devices and the cloud. The business school explains that investment in emerging technologies like these increases competitiveness significantly.
Insead lists three primary categories: mobile internet-connected devices like smartphones, laptops and tablets; cloud services; and collaboration tools such as conferencing and instant messaging. On the other hand, there is the more traditional side of IT which includes hardware and enterprise software.
Asian companies have revealed their plans to increase their IT budget by 30% before 2015. While European companies also intend to spend more on new technologies, they will not be able to match Asian budgets.
Still, the report warns that Asian companies “must be careful not to rush too quickly to adopt new technologies” without a platform.
AT&T regional vice president Andrew Edison added:
“Increasing productivity is one of the primary challenges facing European companies today. New technologies like cloud offer great opportunities to do this, which some high performers are demonstrating.
“However, simply adopting the newest technologies is not the answer, and is in fact a great risk. The secret is a mature platform and avoiding the creation of ‘infrastructure spaghetti’ in the rush to adopt the latest tools.”