Latin American firms should invest more in productivity tools - including collaboration and unified communications - in order to reduce the impacts of the global economic slowdown, Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latin American financial services managing director Ricardo Galindo told BNamericas.
According to the executive, the Latin American corporate sector is highly aware of the importance of technology as a way to increase productivity and reduce costs, so the regional IT market should not be as affected by the economic slowdown as in previous crises.
"IT companies see this crisis as an opportunity. Those affected by the crisis need to review where to invest in order to be more efficient, and those that are hurting less or are simply not feeling the crisis will invest before seeing the affects, precisely in technology," Galindo said.
Galindo also said that investment in areas such as IT security and risk management would continue being priorities, particularly in the financial services industries, considering that "if banks cut those investments, it would be like cutting their veins."
Companies in Latin America have also continued investing in server consolidation and virtualization.
"But they should place greater emphasis on employees' productivity. Today, collaboration tools boost people's productivity and when you invest in that you can improve costs, as people are more productive," he added.
After closing the first quarter of its fiscal year 2009 on September 30, with global revenues increasing 9% to US$15.1bn, Galindo said the company is confident on meeting its FY09 sales goals in Latin America, as the region continues demanding technology.
"We will be cautious in the way we do business, but right now we are optimistic and despite the slowdown, we believe the deceleration in the IT market will be slower than in the overall market," he said.
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