Different country, different priorities

While their peers view management issues as one of the top two IT priorities, CIOs and IT decision makers in China are more concerned about managing their corporate networks.

According to the ZDNet Asia IT Priorities Survey 2008/09, software emerged as a common focal point amongst respondents in five Asian locations: Greater China, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

Only 14.3 percent in China, however, regarded management issues as a key priority, compared to the regional average of 35.7 percent. In fact, this category ranked fourth as an IT priority in China, when it emerged either as the top or second priority in the other Asian locations.

And while hardware featured as the Top 3 priority amongst Chinese respondents at 20.4 percent, compared to the regional average of 11.1 percent, this category was a low priority with those in India, emerging as Top 5 priority.

Conducted online in August, the IT Priorities Survey 2008/09 polled 722 IT decision makers across the Asia-Pacific region, including Indonesia, India, Thailand and Australia/New Zealand. The majority, 31 percent, were based in India, followed by Singapore where respondents comprised 17.7 percent of the total group. Some 14 percent were from Malaysia, while 9 percent were based in the Philippines and 8.7 percent in Indonesia.