Dubai, September 29, 2015

Governments in the Middle East and North Africa will spend US $11.4 billion on IT products and services in 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. This forecast includes spending on internal services, software, IT services, data center, 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 throughout the forecast period within government sector. It is expected to be US $4.7 billion in 2015, with mobile network services being the largest sub-segment with USD $3.1 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 2.8 percent over 2014 spending, to reach US $1.2 billion in 2015,” said Anurag Gupta, research vice president at Gartner. “VSS will grow 9 percent in 2015 to reach USD $454 million. VSS are software applications that are unique to a vertical industry. In government VSS includes software that focus on agency-specific processes and domain areas, such as revenue and tax, case management.”

"Investments in citizen centric services under smart cities plans that provide consumer-grade convenience will be the driving force for government ICT in advanced states. Continued investments in core infrastructure and online services will be focus area in MENA government ICT,“ said Mr.Gupta.

Further information on government sector IT spending is available in the Gartner report, [Forecast: Enterprise IT Spending for the Government and Education Markets, Worldwide, 2013-2019, 2Q15 Update](http://www.gartner.com/document/3098430?ref=QuickSearch&sthkw=Forecast: Enterprise IT Spending for the Government and Education Markets%2C Worldwide%2C 2013-2019%2C 2Q15 Update&refval=154846773&qid=316cc99b95e35e6bd3b361aa3ac59ff6). 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.