The IT industry seems to have been untouched by the global economic recession |and EMC Thailand's acting country manager Peter Goh believes it will grow five-fold

Despite the economic recession, Peter Goh, acting country manager for EMC Thailand - a unit of the US-based IT infrastructure firm - remains undaunted thanks to the unrelenting explosion of digital information.

According to Goh, who is also in charge of EMC operations in Malaysia and Singapore, projections show that digital information created and replicated worldwide will increase five-fold by 2012.

"From DVD, RFID, MP3 players and digital TVs to medical imaging, digital cameras, e-mail, laptops, GPS and ATMs etc - they are all about digital information.

"The combined amount of digital information exchanged across the world was 486 exabytes back in 2008. The IDC paper forecasts that it will top 2,502 exabytes in the year 2012 - a five-fold increase.

"Such an explosive growth rate means the digital universe is growing much faster than global IT spending and IT staffing.

"In terms of IT spending, the growth rate is going to be just 2 per cent annually between 2008 and 2012.

"During the same period, IT staffing growth rate is just 1 per cent, compared to a 51 per cent growth of the digital universe.

"More interestingly, 70 per cent of this universe will be created by individuals, while businesses and other organisations will be responsible for managing and securing 85 per cent of the total digital information.

"For the IT world, it's doing more with less. Based on this study, we've found that data security is still a missing element in information management strategies.

"For example, the survey shows that over 20 per cent of respondents in Thailand and Malaysia say that there is no security policy in place at their organisations.

"Another key finding is that most companies are not prepared to cope with disasters, with only 22.5 per cent of the respondents saying that their enterprises could handle a total system failure," he said.

At present, the financial service sector, government, manufacturing, energy and telecommunications are among the major clients for IT infrastructure.

Regulatory compliance is a key driver of IT spending opportunities in the financial service sector, which is implementing regulations such as Basel II and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

In the telecom sector, there has been a bigger demand to integrate 3G mobile, Wimax and broadband applications into new technology so as to provide the most value-added and creative content.

"In Thailand, the SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] are one of the growth sectors, while the government's massive economic stimulus package [covering 2009-11] also includes a significant IT budget so we expect sales to improve in the next one or two years.

"Overall, our business in Malaysia has been quite resilient, facing very little impact caused by the global economic recession as sales have continued to grow by 2 to 3 per cent.

"In Thailand, sales in the second half have shown a significant improvement from the first six months -led by banks and finance firms, manufacturing and automotive industries.

"We've been through a period of low growth over the past three to four years. This means we need to try harder to achieve the target. A positive attitude is very important and business will be there," Goh said.