IDC's report, 'Resources ICT Market Forecast and Analysis 2011 to 2015', details IDC's analysis of the opportunities that exist within the resources vertical of the Australian ICT market and particularly how the resources sector is responding to its current challenges.

"The Australian resources boom appears to be moderating and may have reached its peak", says IDC research manager, Emilie Ditton. "The sector will be increasingly challenged by the requirement to manage costs within a global environment of moderating growth , and within a local context of high labor and energy costs in Australia."

ICT spending within the resources sector represents almost 6% of the total Australia market, or $2.51 billion in 2011. IDC expects growth (average CAGR) in ICT spending in the resources sector to hit 3.8% on average to 2015, well above the market average CAGR of 2.7%. The resources sector has not traditionally been a big spender on ICT, but IDC expects that the sector will increasingly look to ICT to facilitate cost management, productivity improvements and organisational efficiency objectives.

"As the sector starts to experience moderate growth, it is very heavily focussed on improving operational efficiency and improving productivity to drive up margins (shown in figure below). This is within the context of increasing energy costs and high labour costs, with the Australian resources sector must ensure that it is competitive." Ditton said." IDC expects to see opportunities in technologies that deliver productivity improvements, organisational responsiveness and support maintaining a low cost based such as mobile applications, remote application delivery, business intelligence (BI)/predictive analytics, and cloud computing."