ICT spending in Oman is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.3% from around US$3.2bn in 2019 to US$5.6bn in 2024. Growth will be driven by e-governance and related supporting framework policies, as well as a rise in e-commerce and on-going developments in cloud services, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company. 

Nitin Rajan Mylapore, Senior Technology Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Favorable government policies, dedicated tech parks such as Knowledge Oasis Muscat (KOM), and the presence of Oman Data Park (ODP), which offers a host of services such as public and private cloud products, will be the key factors of growth for Oman’s ICT sector.”

In terms of IT Solutions, client computing will account for the largest share (20.3%) of the overall ICT spending in 2024. The revenue from cloud computing is expected to reach around US$1bn by 2024, accounting for 17.9% of the overall ICT spending. Within cloud computing, public cloud services, the largest segment, will grow at a CAGR of 23.2% during the forecast period, mainly attributed to shifting industry trends to deliver more agile services, drifting from the legacy on-premise software deployments.

Nitin continues: “E-commerce in Oman holds promising demand for cloud services and data centers in the coming years. G-Cloud, the cloud initiative by the Government of Oman, strategic developments such as Cisco’s MoU with Data Mount and ODP’s collaboration with Cisco and Microsoft for boosting cloud adoption will play a valuable role in boosting the country’s cloud computing sector.”

The energy sector is expected to witness a significant uptake in ICT investment with companies such as Microsoft acting as digital facilitators. For example, Microsoft supports SparkLabs Energy (Phaze Ventures’ startup accelerator programme). The program focuses on promising digital energy disruptors, whose core focus is around enhanced oil recovery, renewables, industrial Internet of Things (IoT), logistics and data analytics, among others. Aided by such an encouraging environment, the energy vertical will account for a major share (around 60%) of the overall ICT spending in the country by 2024.

Nitin concludes: “Oman plans to digitalize some of the key public services through the implementation of Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) financing models. In addition, accelerating service delivery will become the core emphasis for organizations and will step-up investments in cloud based technologies, as well as development of pre-integrated cloud platforms.”