Despite being hit by the economic slowdown, the Pharma sector
can be expected to find several growth opportunities in the country
next year. This can be attributed to the fact that several
healthcare institutes are coming up in the country to address
healthcare needs. The country has also seen an early growth of
clinical research institutes. The advent of new pathogens such as
the H1N1 virus and a relatively untapped rural market can also open
up new opportunities.
With a view to addressing market needs more efficiently,
organizations in this sector will invest in new technologies and
finetune their current IT infrastructure to not only reduce
operating costs but also improve overall business efficiency. This
trend is also visible from the results of the Infrastructure Agenda
2010 survey.
60 percent of the survey respondents expect an increase of up to
40 percent or more in their organization’s IT spends in the
year 2010, when compared to 2009. Only 20 percent believe that the
IT budget allocation in their organizations would either stay the
same or decrease in 2010.
| Figure 1: IT budget outlook by CIOs from the Pharma
sector |
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Of the survey respondents, 75 percent see their organizations
investing further in BI solutions in the next year, or expect
increased investments in ERP, SCM, CRM and other enterprise
applications. This can be attributed to the growing competition in
the Indian market and because the market dynamics are changing
rapidly. A staggering 90 percent of the respondents see greater
investments in the area of security by their organizations.
Pharmaceutical organizations are looking to enforce greater
security in their IT infrastructure due to the need to meet
compliance and regulatory requirements and to protect intellectual
property.
While the other verticals in the Infrastructure Agenda 2010
survey are optimistic about increasing their investments in
virtualization, the Pharma sector seems to be trailing behind (see
Figure 1). Fifty percent of the respondents expect further
investments in servers—while only 25 percent believe their
organizations will increase investments in virtualization
technologies.
Organizations today are investing in technologies that will help
them bring down their TCO. While 80 percent of the survey
respondents expect further investments in video conferencing and/or
unified communications, 50 percent look to invest further in
energy-saving technologies and bring down their energy consumption
costs. Only 25 percent respondents agree to invest in SaaS/cloud
computing solutions in 2010. This indicates that while the Pharma
sector will see continued investments in IT in 2010, it will take a
cautious approach to adopting new technologies.
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K T Rajan
Director—Operations, IS &
Projects, Allergan India
S ome IT initiatives that we will look at in 2010 include
adopting virtualization and deploying a unified communications
solution. We are also looking at having a promotional spends and
expense management solution in place next year. Business
Intelligence will also be a key focus area for us in 2010.
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