MANILA, Philippines ? Despite a slow start and cautious steps, the information and communications technology (ICT) industry in the Philippines went on to recover from the economic crisis that rocked the world in 2008.
Many ICT executives saw somewhat better working environments. For some, it may be a surprise but to these executives, it was a mix of good business decisions that led to more manageable operations.
Resiliency
2009 will end with many ICT companies describing the year as challenging but manageable. On a larger scale, the industry was resilient and optimistic.
Acer Philippines Country Manager Manuel Wong described the year as being positive amid increased competition. He said his company was faced by cut throat pricing and the entry of more players in the already crowded PC business, especially on netbooks.
IBM Philippines Country General Manager James Velasquez also said that it was a challenging year but that the ICT industry is just as resilient. For IBM, it was still a good year as it made several client wins.
Velasquez cited several local companies that made such strategic investments in ICT. These include Globe Telecom, Metrobank, Coke, Del Monte, Red Dragon Farms, to name a few.
EMC Philippines Country Manager Ronnie Latinazo noted that businessmen, with a foreknowledge of the problems they could face if they do not make sound decisions to upgrade their IT infrastructure, made necessary adjustments in allocating their resources for sustainable operational efficiency.
Reflecting on the same issue, Dell Philippines Country Manager Barry Bunyi also noted that businesses were also well aware of the consequences of remaining conservative when it comes to IT investments.
?Companies were spending where it made most sense and yet continued to demand IT solutions that were not only more cost efficient at the time period of acquisition, but throughout its usage lifecycle,? Bunyi said.
Natural disasters
Tropical storm ?Ondoy? and Typhoon ?Pepeng,? which wrought hundreds of millions of pesos in damages, put even more strain on the industry. Some companies, especially those in the contact center businesses, had to temporarily stop operations of their locations when some of their locations got flooded.
Other shops with warehouses located in affected areas of Metro Manila lost millions of stocks of equipment.
Still, the disaster pushed companies put the concept of disaster preparedness at top priority. In a previous interview, the new Philippines manager of APC by Schneider Philippe Reveilhac said that companies were looking towards better business continuity measures in the face of such natural disasters.
APC provided assistance to its customers and, for some time, offered an exchange program for customers who want to replace damaged power supplies for new products.
As a result of these disasters, some companies started looking at new building designs to ensure business continuity. Teddy Tiu, Autodesk Philippines country manager, said there has been an emphasis on ICT?s role on urban planning for disaster preparedness and response.
?Design solutions, for example, can contribute to these efforts by providing design innovation tools and technologies that will enable them to visualize, simulate and analyze their design before being physically built,? Tiu said.
Election blues
Even while companies seem to be gung-ho about next year, only a few share some cautious expectations for 2010. Rightly so as the next presidential elections could decide how businesses would prepare themselves amid ?normal? political environments.
Gil Edeza, chief operating officer of IP E-Games said companies, still cautious after their experiences during the previous economic crisis, would only start to invest after the May elections, when a new president is announced.
Commissioner Monchito Ibrahim of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) is also wishing that there should be a successful automation of the 2010 election.
He also hopes that the 2010 election would show how the private sector could work closely with academic institutions to ensure the poll automation successful.
As the year draws to a close, the ICT industry remains to be in good spirits, albeit still cautious.
Nevertheless, the industry is expected to benefit from positive economic gains in the coming year as companies invest in technology to further improve their operations.
What remains to be seen is how technology spending progresses, particularly after the elections, which can be a good indicator of economic recovery for the country.
