IDC Sees Opportunities for Higher SOA Adoption in End-User Organizations in Asia/Pacific

April 12, 2007

Singapore and Hong Kong, April 12, 2007 – From its recent exclusive end-user survey of 680 Asia/Pacific (including Japan) companies, more than 42% of end-users interviewed revealed that they do not have plans to embark on SOA projects. However, IDC has reasons to believe that there are opportunities to convert these naysayers after assessing their business and IT priorities.

From a business priority perspective, corporate end-users in Asia/Pacific who claim to have no concrete plans for SOA within the next 2 years are currently focused on reducing costs and increasing profit margins. "To drive SOA solutions in these organizations, vendors need to offer a “right price with the right solution” approach in order to persuade these corporate end-users to include SOA in their future IT blueprint," said Dr. Patrick Chan, Research Director, Asia/Pacific Emerging Technologies IT Services. "Vendors should help these organizations with SOA-based solutions that not only aid in automation and identification of redundant business service workflow, but also in improving business processes that can significantly contribute towards the reduction of business costs."

For example, vendors can leverage SOA solutions to help these organizations extend their sales and partnering channels rapidly and efficiently. Traditional B2B approach may require higher investment of resources that could result in lower profit margins. Another potential entry point for SOA projects is for vendors to help these organizations to improve the customer service standards of their frontline operations. SOA approaches can help to increase the efficiency of their frontline customer service representatives by consolidating and improving collaborative workflow, services and communication with various back-end services.

This group of end-users surveyed also revealed that building and acquiring new applications to support business growth are their IT top priorities. Such a focus is favorable towards incorporating SOA into the organization even though there are no plans for a full-fledged SOA project. SOA provides an incremental approach where new composite applications and service offerings can be built out of the organization IT assets and services. "Introducing SOA concepts and educating these end-users early will be key to gaining their acceptance," continued Dr. Patrick Chan.

IDC believes that these end-users are likely to be sourcing for industry-specific applications for their business. Vendors and partners should find out what business applications these end-users need and offer these as an effective entry point into bigger SOA projects and blueprints.

To hear more insights about IDC's SOA research, register for IDC's Asia/Pacific annual premier event for the IT and communications industry, Directions, taking place in Singapore on 20 April 2007. Dr. Patrick Chan will host an SOA session where he will share his vision and the expectations and realities of SOA in the disruptive IT era, and advise vendors on the opportunities available. He will discuss current business initiatives that could help extend the life of SOA projects and their ROI for sustained benefits across IT and business groups, and highlight emerging trends of SOA technologies and best practices from SOA success stories.

For more information about purchasing the research, please contact Selina Ang at +65-6829-7717 or sang@idc.com. For press enquiries, please contact Holly Fung at +852-2905-4225 or hfung@idc.com.

Contact

Chong Chee Kian
Events & Marketing Executive
Tel: +603-2169-7521
Fax : +603-2163-5098
Email:ckchong@idc.com