The Indian IT infrastructure market comprising of servers, storage and networking equipment is expected to reach USD 3.01 billion by 2016, research firm Gartner on Monday said.

The segment, estimated at USD 1.86 billion in 2011, is expected to grow 10.3 per cent to USD 2.05 billion in 2012 and further expand to USD 3.01 billion by 2016, Gartner said in a statement.

"Technology's role in the enterprise is increasing and IT's closer alignment with business, and vice versa, is a topic of much focus within Indian enterprises today," Gartner Research Director Aman Munglani said.

Soon, there will be a time when there is no IT strategy, only a business strategy as CIO's are seeing technology as a business enabler and a engine for innovation, he added.

Revenue growth will be primarily driven by ongoing data center modernisation, as well as new data center buildouts.

Servers are the largest segment of the Indian IT infrastructure market as revenue are forecast to reach USD 754.5 million in 2012 and grow to USD 967.2 million in 2016.

In 2011, server segment revenues in the Indian market stood at stood at USD 728.6 million.

The external controller-based storage disk market in India is expected to grow from USD 354.4 million in 2011 to USD 439.4 million in 2012 to USD 842.4 million in 2016.

This is the fastest growing segment within the IT infrastructure market, it said.

The enterprise network equipment market in India, which includes enterprise LAN and WAN equipment, is expected to grow from USD 780.2 million in 2011 to USD 860.9 million in 2012 and further to USD 1.19 billion in 2016.

"The key growth driver for the data center market is the ongoing investment in large captive data centers coupled with the capacity growth witnessed within the data center service provider space," Munglani said.

Indian organisations are heavily focusing on optimising their infrastructure capacity by implementing virtualisation and incorporating newer ways of data center design, he added.

"Though India is in the early stages of cloud adoption, cloud service providers will also be a key contributor to the infrastructure consumption, especially for commodity type, scalable technologies, such as scale out systems and extreme low energy servers," Gartner Principal Research Analyst Naveen Mishra said.

The nexus of IT forces like growing the mobility installed base, increasing social media penetration, coupled with gradual adoption of cloud, will drive fundamental shifts in the way data center managers design, operate and manage their data centers and associated partners, Mishra added.