• 
• 

Published on August 7, 2007

With the region's economic growth expected to continue to outpace the worldwide average by a point or two, its share of WW GDP will also grow and account for over 28% of the world's GDP by 2011 according to economists (EIU, June 2007). Associated with this growth is stronger capital investment of which IT is a growing component, as illustrated in the survey findings where more organizations state increasing IT budget requirements than a decline.

"The recent survey of over 3,200 enterprise and public sector CIOs and IT managers region-wide indicates that managing IT cost as top priority", notes Gary Koch, Associate VP for IDC's Asia/Pacific IT Spending. "This is not surprising as organizations which reported increasing IT budget by far outnumbered those with diminishing budget needs. While this has been the case in previous surveys, nearly 60% of organizations stated their 2006 budget was an increase over the previous year, compared to about 5% who revealed declining IT budget", adds Gary. 

The list of the other top IT infrastructure requirements in the 2007 survey includes #2 building a secure IT environment and #3 faster deployment of applications. Looking ahead to 2008, IDC's analysis confirms that growing IT requirements will again push budget levels higher, which will likely put this issue higher on the radar of senior management.  Marked investment in transformational business strategies is not driving all IT budget growth across the region as nearly 70% of external expenditure is dedicated to product replacement or maintenance of existing infrastructure components and functionality.

"Thailand's requirements is comparable to that of APeJ since Thai CIOs have started seeking a more secure IT environment. From the IT infrastructure perspective, reducing total IT cost is still among the top concerns followed by the focus on building a secure IT environment. Faster deployment of applications was ranked among the top 3.  Interestingly, as compared with 2006, faster deployment of applications was the second most important factor for Thai CIOs over security", adds Thaweesith Kun-Ongkhananon, Research Manager for IDC Thailand.

The survey also illustrates that while hardware accounts for the lion's share of budget, IT staff compensation, training, and retention of internal IT staff will garner a growing share of total IT expenditure.  Outsourcing of certain IT related tasks too, will be a bottom line consideration for the budget conscious across the Asia/Pacific region.