Processing .....please wait.. 
The article has been forwarded.... 
APAC businesses to spend more on new software
By siliconindia
|
Thursday, 10 September 2009, 23:16 IST
Bangalore: According to a recent survey by Gartner, business establishments in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region are considering to increase their software budgets by 4.4 percent in 2010. However, IT budgets of these establishments will see a decline of 3.1 percent.
The report determined that average expected increase in the software budget in the APAC region is higher than all other regions surveyed like Europe, West Asia, Africa, North America and Latin America.
As a part of a worldwide survey of 982 IT managers, Gartner surveyed 323 IT managers in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, China, India and Hong Kong. These IT managers were inquired whether their budgets are expected to fall, grow or will be the same in 2010.
An increase of 42 percent in the IT budgets is determined by the Indian respondents, as their Chinese counterparts calculated budgets at an excess of 32 percent. Still, Malaysian managers are seeking to cut their IT spend by 52 percent.
"For most organizations, the budgeting process happens once a year, but adjusting the IT budget is a continuous exercise driven by economic conditions and changes in the business," said Yanna Dharmasthira, Research Director, Gartner.
"In the midst of economic volatility, hardware budget allocation remains the top priority in most countries, but software budgets are a real bright spot and continue to demonstrate a positive outlook, although more cautious than last year's survey," Dharmasthira added.
Software spend may have second largest share in the IT budgets in most countries. It is same to hardware spend in Australia and India. IT staff spending is notably high in Australia. The report also stated that India has the highest software budget allocation of 26.9 percent, followed by Singapore (25.8 percent), Malaysia (24.1 percent) and China (23.1 percent).
A large number of IT managers opined that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) segment is expected to have an increase, as other priorities include office applications, collaboration and enterprise resource planning software.
The study also said that the software vendors in the APAC region would continue to build, fund and invest in sales and marketing despite economic downturn. "Software vendors should not only focus their sales efforts on traditional regions like India and China, but must look at opportunities in mature markets also. The intention to increase software budgets have become more varied among different countries and organizations, presenting good opportunities in a mix of developed and emerging countries," said Dharmasthira.
