94% of IT leaders in Asia Pacific feeling the pressure of application economy: Survey

Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) enterprises are most affected by the Application Economy, compared to enterprises in the Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said CA Technologies.

More than half of the APJ senior IT and business leaders surveyed (APJ: 57 percent; Americas: 46 percent; EMEA: 45 percent) are seeing a significant impact of the application economy on their industry, and 53 percent (Americas: 45 percent; EMEA: 35 percent) are already experiencing the effects on their own organisation.

[caption id=“attachment_77981” align=“alignleft” width=“300”]  Image: Thinkstock Images[/caption]

While enterprises across APJ recognise the impact of the application economy, less than half of the respondents (49 percent) felt that they are very or highly effective in responding to it.

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Security concerns (41 percent) and budget constraints (36 percent) were cited as the biggest obstacles.

To better cope and meet the new demands of the application economy, enterprises in APJ are taking the following steps: increasing investments by an average of 18 percent over the next five years; acquiring software companies to add development capabilities - 38 percent have made a software acquisition or plan to in the next year; delivering an average of six customer applications in the past year - 42 percent developed four or more customer applications.

The Line of Business (LOB) executives in APJ are also feeling the pressure of the application economy. An overwhelming 94 percent of them are facing increased pressure to release applications more quickly due to customer demand (58 percent) and competitive pressures (65 percent).

Despite the rapid rate of application delivery (average of six customer applications and six internal applications delivered in the past year), only 15 percent of LOB executives are completely satisfied with IT’s speed in delivering new applications or services.

As a result, 82 percent of enterprises surveyed have adopted or are planning to adopt DevOps to increase application delivery.

“As it was at the advent of the Internet Age where websites became ubiquitous, today, applications have become fundamental to every business that wants to survive and thrive in the application economy,” said Kenneth Arredondo, president & general manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies.

“In a hyper-connected region like APJ, applications are redefining customer interactions and spearheading business growth initiatives. This study has shown that IT decision makers in APJ are acting quickly to better respond to customer demands and rapid advances brought on by the application economy.”

The study also identified a set of “Leaders” and “Laggards” in the application economy. By embracing the application economy, the “Leaders” in APJ are distinctly outperforming the “laggards” in all key business metrics, creating an application divide in APJ.

Leaders are growing revenue more than four times and profit more than three times the rate of Laggards, while Leaders are also experiencing more than double of the business coming from new products and services than their Laggard counterparts.

Leaders in APJ are deploying several technologies and processes in order to survive and thrive in the application economy. 43 percent of the Leaders have adopted DevOps methodologies and technologies to speed application delivery compared to only 4 percent of the Laggards.

Leaders are spending more on security compared to Laggards. One-third of all IT spending is expected to be spent on security in three years by the leaders.

Leaders manage IT as a business and report better overall IT performance. They are far more likely to frequently use software tools to manage IT as a business.

More than two-thirds (69 percent) of the Leaders are adopting mobility as an enterprise-wide strategy versus 14 percent of the Laggards, with clear evidence of increased customer satisfaction and faster time-to-market.