Australia taking steps to move into application economy: CA Tech
Earlier this year, a study commissioned by CA Technologies found that less than a third of Australian organisations feel that they're ready to tap into the application economy. But now, a few months down the track, the interest is starting to pick up.
Hope Powers, CA Technologies Australia and New Zealand senior vice president and managing director, told ZDNet during CA World 2014 that while the research did show that ANZ was not really ready, more and more customers are beginning to make plans to leap into the application economy, a term which CA refers to as a mixture of development, marketing, and sales of IT applications.
"One of the things is I'm seeing more and more customers ask us questions and ask for our help in the journey they're planning. They recognise it, and they realise that's where new revenue streams will come from, and they're looking for CA to help them with API management, for example," she said.
Powers noted that Australia and New Zealand's uptake of the application economy is expected to occur within large organisations, as well as smaller companies, which are able to move a lot faster because "they're so nimble and agile".
"I'd say the next research that we commission, we'll see Australia and New Zealand really making great strides," Powers said.
As for which specific areas customers are looking at within the application economy, Powers says it's mostly at software as a service (SaaS), particularly now that cloud adoption in Australia is so strong. She also highlighted that given CA Technologies is now hosting its services locally in Australia, it provides an advantage for the company, as well as its customers, to know that their data is staying on-shore.
"It doesn't always meet their needs and whatever reason they might choose to go on-premise, but we're seeing more and more customers go to SaaS," she said.
So with this shift to SaaS, where does this leave the mainframe? Powers said Australian customers are still utilising the mainframe for "certain aspects like the front end, but also leveraging the compute power".
Aimee Chanthadavong travelled as a guest of CA Technologies to CA World 2014.