Springboard Research Predicts Asia To Continue Rebounding In 2010

IT expenditure in Asia is set to grow at 8.8 percent in 2010, an increase from 6.4 percent in 2009, predicts Springboard Research, a player in the IT market research industry. According to Springboard’s executive brief ‘Asia Pacific IT Market Predictions 2010’, Asia has fared better than the rest of the world, fuelled by continued growth in China, India, and other markets. Asia has not seen the carnage that the Western economies have experienced and while Asia has taken its lumps, it is emerging much quicker and this is reflected in IT spending throughout the region.

According to the Springboard brief, organisations are expected to continue to focus on extracting greater value from existing IT investments versus significant, new capital expenditure. Additionally, they will continue to focus on reducing operational xpenditure from both business and IT perspectives. Data centre transformations, IT manageability advancements and virtualisation investments are finally helping ‘move the needle’ downward on the traditionally high and stubborn costs to simply ‘keep the lights on’.

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According to Springboard Research, the top 10 trends that will shape enterprise IT in the Asia Pacific region in 2010 are:

1. Analytics, and the evolution towards ‘Intelligent Solutions’ more broadly, emerges as a key driver of new business value

2. The convergence of computing platforms accelerates

3. Cloud computing momentum will increase dramatically

4. Virtualisation will play an increasingly critical role on the desktop

5. Mobile devices and applications are crucial for overcoming the digital divide in emerging markets

6. Collaboration continues to shine as organisations leverage initiatives put in place during the economic crisis

7. A wave of innovative new payment technologies emerge

8. Online developer platforms and communities are the new ecosystem battleground & epicentre of application innovation

9. Social networking will be as accessible and commercialised as the Internet itself

10. IT abstraction forces CIOs to change or fall by the wayside

The Springboard brief disclosed that in spite of the generally optimistic position of Asia, there are indeed risks and challenges facing the market in 2010. IT buyers and prospects are returning to a more ‘normal’ state of IT investments, but they remain cautious and increasingly skeptical of vendor guidance. IT solution providers can expect sales cycles and the quality of prospects to improve over 2009, but to remain more challenging than before the crisis.

Springboard concludes that the economic crisis, while being destructive, has also helped drive actions and decisions that have positioned organisations in Asia for a year of growth in 2010. The crisis has helped Asian companies become leaner and more productive. The brief also stated that technology is set to witness continued growth as the market rebounds and companies continue increasing their IT investments to compete in the global economy. Overall, it will be a year of increased investments, increased spending, and greater opportunities for technology vendors present in the region.