According to the research firm, the emphasis organizations had on productivity, optimization, and business integration were all drivers of the growth. IDC expects this positive impetus to continue and drive the market to grow at a CAGR of 13.74 percent till 2015 and reach US$8.7 billion.
"Newer delivery models such as SaaS and appliances together with "socialytic" apps--a convergence of enterprise apps, unified communications (UC), collaboration tools, social media, analytics--and enterprise applications mobility, will start gaining traction and would graduate to mainstream adoption owing to the need for optimized business processes, better marketing, customer relationship, and executive decision making," said Sabharinath Bala, research manager of IDC's Asia/Pacific Enterprise Application Software.
Key points from the study include:
* Although core application modules were the primary focus for companies, enterprise asset management, financial performance and strategy management applications, and other supply chain modules like manufacturing and other back-office applications are expected to grow significantly in 2011 as these are not substantially covered in traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.
* Focus will be on the integration of analytic appliances into enterprise applications to help streamline business processes and thereby improving customer relationships, reducing time-to-market, and enhancing collaborative decision making.
* With the evolution of multiple technology areas including smartphones, cloud computing, and hosting services, the enterprise apps market will see an augmented stimulus on true enterprise mobility services, not just to improve productivity, but to access mission critical information and make real-time informative decisions.
* Despite the potential risk of being tied to a single vendor, companies will start embracing vertical-specific frameworks, combining software and services to enable faster ROI, as enterprise transformation takes front stage.
Among the 197 vendors covered in the tracker report in the second half of 2010, six achieved more than US$100 million in revenue, said IDC. Apart from the traditional global vendors like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, specialized vendors like Salesforce.com, and local vendors like Kingdee (www.kingdee.com) registered strong year-on-year growth, IDC noted.