Mumbai: The Indian IT infrastructure market, comprising servers, storage and networking equipment, is expected to grow by about 9 percent to $2.92 billion by 2017, research firm Gartner said.

"The nexus of forces — big data, cloud, social and mobility — are finding real-time business driven use, which is bringing a paradigm shift in the way IT is delivering business impact and hence, changing the role of an Indian CIO," Gartner Research director Naveen Mishra said.

Despite global economic challenges, India has strong growth opportunities, including in IT infrastructure, as CIOs are looking at how IT can be used to optimize business operations, he said. "The IT infrastructure market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9 percent to $2.92 billion by 2017 from $1.90 billion in 2012," Mishra said. The Indian IT infrastructure market is being driven by hardware refresh, optimization and consolidation efforts.

"New data centre build out, primarily driven by service providers, is providing added impetus to this market. The server market accounted for the biggest chunk of the market totaling $707.4 million in 2012 and is forecast to total $962.3 million in 2017," he said. Increased uptake of x86-based technologies, coupled with continued investment in virtualization will drive server growth, he said.

Also Read: This Indian Engineer Just Ditched Cisco For Its Biggest Rival

Also Read: 5 Linux Distributions With Fastest Boot Speeds