Projected market growth

Kok cited a Gartner forecast that SaaS will have a 22.1 percent compound annual growth rate from now until 2011 for the aggregate enterprise application software market. "I believe that this market will pick up much faster during the current global financial crisis as enterprises seek out new ways of doing business."

According to SCS, Alatum will drive grid computing resources from the SCS data center, which comprises an initial base of some 2,000 CPUs and 16 terabytes of storage.

The consortium will work with its ISV partners to determine actual bandwidths needed by customers, which varies according to the application used. Alatum currently provides bandwidth of up to 10 megabits per second, which may be scaled up later if required, SCS said.

"Inclusion of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform and applications in Alatum is a good testimony that the market is ready for open source technologies," said Teong Eng Guan, general manager for Red Hat ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).