Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) enterprise applications software market returned to positive growth in the second half of 2009, registering a 2% decline in 2009 compared to 2008, according to market research firm IDC.
The firm expects enterprise applications market rebound to continue and post a growth of 15.4% in 2010. Australia, India and the PRC formed the largest share and contributed to 70% of the APEJ enterprise applications software market in 2009 and a stronger recovery is also expected in India, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the PRC in 2010.
Manufacturing was the largest adopter of enterprise apps, followed by banking, FSI and telecommunications, as well as niche verticals like mining, food and beverage. The contribution from the government sector increased as a result of e-governance initiative, the firm said.
IDC said that organisations remain focused on core modules in their app procurement, with basic enterprise resource managements module like procurement, financial accounting, and enterprise asset management in demand. Customer relationship management (CRM) module like sales and customer services found increased traction due to pressure on customer retention and sales, while supply chain management market didn’t witness strong growth.
According to IDC, application vendors pushed analytics and reporting bundled apps as customers are looking for faster and fact-based decisions making process. Enterprise resource management (ERM) vendors remain focused on the on-premise and hosted model.
IDC expects private cloud and hosted model to register strong growth for ERM in 2010. The SaaS model gained traction with CRM apps in 2009 and the momentum is expected to continue.
Praveen Sengar, research manager of IDC’s Asia/Pacific Enterprise Application Software, Domain Research Group, said: “The economic crisis brought transformation in application adoption and delivery models, driving organisations to look at newer engagement models but remain selective on IT projects using project cost and return on investment as their key decision-making factors.
“Vendors emphasised multiple pricing and delivery models, pre-packaged vertical specific templates, and pre-integrated application stacks to reduce the initial investment and implementation time. IDC expects cloud computing to be a key focus area in 2010 as vendors focus on aligning with partners that have specific vertical industry expertise and seek to sign new partners for delivering private cloud services.”
