Dubai, United Arab Emirates, October 18, 2016

Governments in the Middle East and North Africa are on pace to spend US $11.7 billion on IT products and services in 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. This forecast includes spending on internal services, software, IT services, data center systems, devices and telecom services. Government comprises state and local governments and national government.

Telecom services, which include fixed and mobile telecom services, will be the largest overall spending category through 2020 within the government sector. It is expected to be US $4.8 billion in 2016, with mobile network services being the largest sub-segment with US $3.2 billion in spending.

"The software segment includes enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise application software, infrastructure software and vertical specific software (VSS). Software spending will grow 6.1 percent over 2016 spending, to reach US $1.2 billion," said Moutusi Sau, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Applications will grow 11.8 percent in 2016 to reach USD $394 million."

The top priority for Middle East governments is cybersecurity due to some recent high-profile targeted cyberattacks. Governments are focusing on releasing cybersecurity frameworks and by mandating country-specific regulatory policies, which include NESA in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), QCB in Qatar and SAMA in Saudi Arabia.

Further information on government sector IT spending is available to Gartner clients in the report Gartner report, Forecast: Enterprise IT Spending for the Government and Education Markets, Worldwide, 2014-2020, 2Q16 Update. The forecasts provide total enterprise IT spending, including internal spending and multiple lines of detail for spending on hardware, software, IT services, and telecommunications for vertical industries and 43 countries within seven geographies.