Boston, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/30/2013 -- Executive Summary

BMI View: The total size of the addressable Bahrain IT market in 2013 is forecast by BMI to be US$372mn, up from an estimated US$346mn in 2012. BMI forecasts a CAGR of 8% for 2013-2017. Bahrain's strong financial sector will continue to provide opportunities for vendors in the post-credit crunch era, although we do not see IT spending returning to its previous rate of growth during our fiveyear forecast period. Global IT trends such as cloud computing, virtualisation and convergence will continue to gain ground in the Bahraini market.

Headline Expenditure Projections

Computer hardware sales: US$219mn in 2012 to US$233mn in 2013, +6% in US dollar terms. Forecast in US dollar terms upwardly revised due to macroeconomic factors and the release of Windows 8 should provide a boost to replacement PC purchases.

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Software sales: US$41mn in 2012 to US$44mn in 2013, +7% in US dollar terms. Forecast in US dollar terms downwardly revised due to macroeconomic factors but there are evolving opportunities in the financial sector.

IT services sales: US$94mn in 2012 to US$91mn in 2013, +8% in US dollar terms. Forecast in US dollar terms downwardly revised due to macroeconomic factors but emerging areas such as cloud computing and virtualisation will drive investments.

Risk/Reward Ratings: Bahrain's score was 48.3 out of 100.0. Bahrain remained in seventh place in our latest MEA RRR table, behind regional peers Qatar and Kuwait, but ahead of Oman and Lebanon.

Key Trends & Developments

- Bahrain is becoming an important financial hub and there is a substantial opportunity as banks invest to support new services and regulatory compliance. Virtualisation solutions are set to become increasingly popular in the financial sector as banks look to save on hardware and energy costs. Meanwhile, the government has also embarked on a journey towards cloud computing, launching a plan for consolidation and virtualisation of its IT infrastructure.
- Cloud computing development has been relatively slow in Bahrain compared with some other markets but in September 2012, Batelco, the leading local telecom service providers, launched an infrastructure management platform called IMaaS. Software vendors were also rolling out new hosted solution offerings in the Bahraini market, targeted at private enterprises as well as public sector organisations.
- Enterprise applications should account for around 30% of software spending, as the market for enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications is far from saturated. New cloud computing offerings should fuel further demand from end-users to utilise this technology.

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