SCCyberworld

Friday, May 2, 2008

IDC ASEAN DIRECTIONS 2008: Giving perspective to regional IT markets

KUALA LUMPUR, 30 April 2008 – The annual conference held by leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC records a first this year – holding an ASEAN Directions which provided market opportunity insights into the various ICT markets in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

IDC's annual Directions conference has been recognized as the industry's premier ICT event worldwide, delivering an informative and actionable perspective of the issues shaping the technology industry, and the resulting impact on the businesses of IT providers and users.

Managing Director Selinna Chin said, "In Malaysia, we are building on this reputation and making the event even more relevant to the in-country management executives by providing global, regional, and ASEAN specific insights as well as vertical industry perspectives in the government, financial and manufacturing sectors. This way, we are giving much more value to our business attendees as they are able to better understand the ICT market trends and evolution that impacts their playing field in the lASEAN region.” Based on the success of the IDC ASEAN Directions 2008, IDC Malaysia plans to continue this annual ‘insights’ tradition in April every year.

Entitled ’IDC ASEAN Directions 2008 - Tech X.O: Mastering New Business Models and Markets’, the conference focused on the continuous innovation that is taking place in product offerings, development models, distribution models and usage models, which are in turn driving new, mashed-up offerings and models, fueling new demands in traditional and emerging customer segments, redefining industry alliances, and ultimately, shaping new business models and offerings.

Selinna says that the unprecedented "hyperdisruption" in the IT and communications landscape, driven by endless innovation, has opened up new growth opportunities for IT suppliers.
“Basically, this is the crux of the IDC ASEAN Directions 2008 message that is incorporated into the various presentations by its speakers. Each presenter tackled key IT-market issues such as being a tech-savvy enterprise; the involvement of the web in the transformation of IT services and their pricing structures; new corporate ‘ecosystems’ that are forming…amongst others.”

Attracting over 100 attendees from Vietnam, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, IDC ASEAN Directions 2008 saw the participation of 17 IDC analyst speakers from around the region, each bringing their expertise in the various subject matters such as Unified Communications, ‘Software As a Service’ models, IT Services Transformation, and New Media and Digital Marketplace.

The following is a brief summary of the some country-based insights shared at the event. (More details can be obtained from IDC Malaysia at the below contacts):

For Indonesia:
- Indonesia’s recent spike in inflation will continue to shrink disposable income levels, which will lead to IT spend reduction among consumers.
- The optimal balance between the government’s subsidized fuel policy and generation of more export money will have strong impact on available funds for IT infrastructure expenditure.

For Malaysia:
- The government is expected to cushion any negative impact with a series of different ICT related initiatives.
- The promotion of Malaysia as a potential shared services hub would likely help to drive business investments and services exports

For Philippines:
- Like Thailand, the US is the largest export market for the Philippines so the US downturn will impact export businesses and manufacturers, hamper IT investment.
- Strong remittance levels will continue to support real disposable income, driving domestic IT demand.


For Thailand:
- As US is Thailand’s largest export market, weakening demand would impact the export sector marginally. However the incoming government is likely to run a stimulatory fiscal policy to boost spending on IT infrastructure development projects.
- Business investments are projected to return with strong growth rates as a result of investment pull back in the last 15 months.

For Vietnam
- There will be increased adoption of open source software and hardware will enjoy strong growth, particularly in data storage
- There will be rising demand for security and storage software, and business process standardization
- Vietnam will be the potential offshore service location

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