NaTIONaL SURVEy
One company with a particularly positive outlook on Spain is Dimension
Spain : IT Services & Software Market
Data. The services and solutions provider may only have two offices in Spain, 2006-2008 in Euros (m). Source: EITO
compared to eight in France, six in Germany and five in the UK, and although Sector 2006 2007 2008
Spain is its smallest market in terms of revenue, Russell Bolan, the company’s System Software 1,723 1,851 2,001
CEO in Europe believes it has a lot to offer. Application Software 799 847 888
“We were losing money three years ago, but the last couple of years have Software Products 2,522 2,698 2,889
made us profitable,” he says. “It’s been a good couple of years. How do we IT Services 5,395 5,890 6,400
continue to grow? We have always believed it should be done organically.” Software & Services 7,917 8,588 9,289
Although Bolan is aware of what Spain has to offer, he does feel the next Total IT 13,678 14,516 15,473
few years will be tougher. “The GDP here has done better than other parts in Last year the IT market was growing around 8%, including ICT it was around
Europe, but I think that his will decline by the end of the year, and next year. 10%. The economy was 3.3% last year, meaning the IT market is going more
Construction has made a big difference and there will be a decline in banking. than twice the GDP.
However, it won’t be the same level of impact as in the rest of Europe.” Lopez says that the success of the IT market is due to more than simple
According to Pedro Tortosa, virtualisation specialist Ermestel’s managing reasons, though admits that outsourcing both into Spain and out has increased.
director, the construction boom of the last few years accounted for one third “There is a promotion of technology, a good implementation of IT and
of Spanish GDP, and resulted in an increase in mortgage interest rates, which technology is very accessible for enterprise. We have won some important
consequently has discouraged potential buyers from investing in the sector. customers and grown a lot. I can see it continuing, as it’s a key market for us at
Russell Bolan feels part of the reason Spain might escape the worst has the moment.”
to do with the investment that has gone into Spain from Europe, and been Regarding the current problems of the housing market and the effect it
invested in the economy and infrastructure, as well as Spain’s continuing might have on the Spanish economy, Lopez is not as worried as others. “IT is
adapting of the technology available. a very different thing to construction. Outsourcing and software, in terms of
Lluís Font (below right), CEO of System Management Solutions provider governance, are the ones experiencing big growth.”
NTR Global agrees that Spain will suffer less than other countries. “Given the
globalisation of the economy, a situation like that of the mortgage market
will naturally have an impact on every country. However, the impact on
the European economy has been less extreme, with Spain as the country
experiencing the most growth within the EU. This means that while there may
be a bit of an economic downturn, no major crisis is expected to ensue.”
This viewpoint would seem to be backed up by figures from IT Europa in
our research report System Integrators in Europe 2006/7. Of the 17 countries
measured for year-on-year sales growth, Spain had the fifth biggest increase,
behind Germany, Italy, Poland and Switzerland. In figures that measured the
amount of revenue businesses received, the biggest category was companies
producing $300-500m (€192-320m), so a relatively large number of mid-size
companies could be seen as giving it stability.
Manuel Lopez (page 20), Corporate Marketing manager for HP in Spain,
believes that Spain has been on a significant upward trend for the last few
years. “The Spanish market has been growing for five or more years”, he says.
02 May 2008 19
It0808 - 18-21_Spain_Ent.indd 19 2008-04-30 11:50
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