In a 2009 Gartner survey of Asia-Pacific organisations about their software spending intentions, positive outlook increasingly varied by country, and was not only dominated by emerging countries such as China and India. Mature countries such as Australia and Singapore are not conservative in their software budget plan.
In the six countries/markets surveyed, on-premises software dominated software portfolio, and was more significant in Australia (77 per cent). Hosted and software-as-a-service (SaaS) trailed at 18.5 per cent and 17 per cent of the total software portfolio in the six countries/markets combined respectively.
Revenue from SaaS is still a small portion of overall ERP market, accounting for 5-7 per cent of worldwide ERP software revenue market share. Through 2010, end-user organisations are expected to remain cautious in their software spending. However, vendors should increase their marketing and sales activities, while starting to realise revenue from the sales of the previous year's pipeline. Asia-Pacific's enterprise software market revenue is estimated to reach $20 billion in 2009, reflecting 6.6 per cent growth. This is a significant slowing from the previous year's growth of 13.8 per cent as the result of the volatile economy. Nevertheless, growth in 2010 is expected to reach 10.2 per cent, reflecting an uptick, although this is still below 2008's growth level. Within application software, ERP and office suites will remain the largest segments throughout the forecast period, while Web conferencing and project and portfolio management (PPM) will have the highest compound annual growth rates (CAGRs). Within infrastructure software, operating systems and database management systems will continue to be the largest segments, with data integration and virtualisation being the fastest-growing and having the highest CAGRs.
The outlook for mature markets, such as Australia and Singapore, continues to be positive, specifically in 2010. This is because these countries' revenue is supported by a consistent maintenance revenue stream and a strong vendor channel and service infrastructure, as well as positive expectations for end-user software budget increases in 2010.
Software industry focus: · Technology – SOA, Web services, open source, consolidation, virtualisation and Web 2.0. · Software delivery – SaaS, global delivery models, Web platforms and cloud computing, IT outsourcing and electronic software delivery models. · Economics – Regional differences and/or variations in GDP growth, high labor costs, availability of credit, trade-related disputes and costs of natural resources. · Business – Business performance and transparency, regulations (compliance, corporate and IT governance), consumerisation, collaborative working and sharing, content and data proliferation, cost containment and green IT.
Facts and figures
9.5% - The compound annual growth rate forecast for Australian enterprise software spending from 2008-2013, according to Gartner. 20.9% - In Gartner’s Asia-Pacific user survey for fiscal 2010, Australian respondents opted to spend 20.9% of total IT budgets on software. 25% - Australian respondents said they would spend 25% of total IT budgets on IT staff in fiscal 2010. 44% - The percentage of Australians who expected IT budgets to remain the same in fiscal 2010, Gartner reported. 48% - The percentage of software used by Australian organisations today that is proprietary or commercial, according to Gartner’s user survey. 77% - Of Australian organisations surveyed, 77% will deploy on-premises software over the next 12 months. Just 6% said SaaS. $US4.5bn – The revenue expected across Australia’s total enterprise software market in 2010. $US6.2bn – The revenue derived from enterprise software purchases in Australia in 2013, according to Gartner.
