Recovery and transformation were the two overarching themes in the annual International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) Top 10 predictions for 2010. 2011 is projected to be a natural extension of these themes. In the coming year, IDC expects the Asian business and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) space to be defined by sustainable growth, and in some cases, high growth. The healthy economy, in turn, will fuel ICT transformation, triggering it to go “mainstream.”

Although the Asian markets were not as badly hit by the financial crisis as compared to North America and Western Europe, the failing economy did have a lasting impact on the market dynamics in the region. "As growth became an uncertainty at the end of 2008, most companies in the region started increasing their focus on capturing a larger wallet share in their existing markets rather than expanding into new ones. As a result, competition in the region has intensified after the crisis has passed and even after organic and inorganic market expansions are back on the agenda. Most companies across all sectors are now faced with increased competition for their products and services and IDC expects the trend to continue in the next few years. IDC also believes that customer centricity initiatives will become a priority in emerging markets in 2011 and beyond,” says Claus Mortensen, Principal for Emerging Technology Research, Practice Group, IDC Asia/Pacific.

IDC expects the Asian market to enjoy another solid year of strong growth. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines are projected to generate the strongest IT spending rise in 2011.

The following are IDC’s top 10 ICT predictions in 2011. These trends are what IDC believes will have the biggest commercial impact on the APEJ ICT market.

1. Socialytic Applications Will Transform the Collaboration Market

IDC predicts that 2011 will be the year where the trend of combining social media with business analytics will make its mark across most of the key enterprise applications in use today. Applications are beginning to be embedded with unified communications and social features today and IDC expects virtually all types of business applications to undergo a fundamental transformation in functional structure by fusing traditional business applications with both social/collaboration software and analytics in 2011 and beyond.

2. Mobilution -- Mobility Will Make A Leap Into IT

IDC is seeing what we could call a “perfect storm” created by the evolution of different areas of technology combining to create a revolution in mobility. Tablets, media tablets like iPads and large-screen smartphones can now run almost fully functional versions of all enterprise software and services. With the move towards cloud computing, we are now seeing many of these IT systems being delivered in virtualized environments minimizing the importance of device-based computing power. It truly is “everything” going mobile and IDC believes 2011 will be the catalyst year for this.

3. "Less for Less" -- Self-Service Customer Portals Will Spearhead Low-Cost

Customer Centricity Market competition in Asia, regardless of industry, is expected to intensify in the next three to five years. As a result, many businesses will face the ever greater task of finding the unique competitive differentiation in the marketplace. IDC predicts that customer centricity – the adaptation of products and services to match changing markets -- will become the single most important driver for most, if not all organizations. At the same time, we are also seeing the rising influence of Gen Y in corporate world. With these two forces at work, the role of self-service (via the web) will become significant. The notion of “less for less” refers to spending less on service delivery with what appears to the customer as a less complex, easy to use customer-care environment. ICT will clearly play a critical role in a “less for less” self-service customer centricity environment.

4. Analytics Will Accelerate the Chase For Asian Consumption

Competition is expected to intensify in Asia in the next three to five years with more businesses entering into the region given its growth potential. As a result of its ability to improve decision-making and drive revenue growth, business analytics is predicted to take center stage for CIOs in 2011 as the technology is increasingly viewed as an enabler for organizations to compete more effectively.