Asia's ADS market growing despite crisis
A recent study revealed a growth of 6.7 percent in the application deployment software (ADS) market in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan (APEJ), from 2007 to 2008.
The IDC report released Wednesday, said the ADS market grew from US$740.1 million to US$789.7 million between 2007 and 2008.
The growth was attributed to businesses undertaking a stream of application deployment projects and data warehouse implementations, in an effort to deal with challenges such as budget revisions brought on by the economic crisis.
Adren Lim, market analyst with IDC's Asia-Pacific system infrastructure and middleware software research team, said: "There is an increasing trend of investment being channeled toward extending the stack of application deployment software to be more complete and heterogeneous."
The study revealed 67 percent of respondents would continue with their plans to deploy ADS within the next 18 months with 12 percent planning to increase their spending on such software.
Only 5 percent of them are expected to reduce their budget.
IDC also expects the market to be driven by the demand for business process management (BPM) software and software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Enterprises in developed countries are expected to increase investment in BPM software aimed at improving alignment between business requirements and IT processes.
In the emerging countries, the expected proliferation of SaaS applications will drive ADS investments, Lim said.
IDC is expecting emerging countries like India, Vietnam and China to lead the region in this aspect, as they carry the highest five-year compound annual growth rates (CAGR) at 17 percent, 15 percent and 14 percent respectively.
Although developed countries like Australia and Korea will slow down adoption in the first half of 2009, the remaining half of the year is expected to grow rapidly, fueled by government projects and economic stimulus plans.
IDC said the ADS segment will grow to become a billion-dollar market in the region within the next few years.
Based in Singapore, Konrad Foo is an intern with ZDNet Asia.