IT-Predictions for upcoming trends in 2007

Continuing competitive pressure from a dynamic global business environment are driving organizations to invest in IT infrastructures that are flexible, scalable, secure, and based on open-standards. Organizations are looking to service-oriented architectures (SOA), grid computing, software as a service, business intelligence solutions and integrated enterprise applications with industry-specific capabilities to increase their agility and compete successfully.

 

As organizations continue to invest in technology, there will also be a steady shift in tandem amongst management and IT users to continue scrutinize the ROI and TCO of their IT investments.

 

These trends from 2006 will continue into 2007.

For Oracle Vietnam, 2006 depicted 365 days of excitement, innovation and heightened activity in diverse businesses and functions of the information technology industry.

 

The rise of IT education, product development, ERP, CRM, HCM, software services or even business integration, are all a result of the evolution of IT and its use to build businesses the world over. Vietnam is a significant consumer of IT in this region. 

 

In a growing market like Vietnam, consolidation has become prominent and many IT organizations are moving towards business consolidation. With mergers and acquisitions, it became imperative for companies to ensure smooth integration of their merged entities’ financial assets, systems and processes, people, technology, IPR, products and services. And for this to happen smoothly, they would have had to adopt a service oriented architecture (SOA) approach – which Oracle believes will drive the next change in transformation of business. 

 

In addition, as Vietnam’s companies gear up to take on fierce competition by international giants and with IT commoditization and development of new technologies, more and more organizations have started to seriously explore innovative use of IT to help them grow. We are privileged to have had the opportunity to work with some pioneering organizations that have used IT innovatively. These include customers from SMBs segment such as logistic, transportation, handicraft, and food.

 

The new year will see the emergence and maturation of specialized IT tools like software as a service, grid computing, business intelligence, CRM, HCM solutions among others. Not only will large organizations adopt these new technologies, even the small and medium businesses in Vietnam, will demand it. This enhanced adoption can be attributed to the rise in the competitive business environment and also strict guidelines levied by regulatory authorities in their effort to ensure good governance.

 

As a result of this, issues related to compliance, transparency, breach of information security are taking centre stage. As more and more Vietnamese companies participate as suppliers, contractors or customers in the global commercial ecosystem, understanding of and adherence to global compliance norms has become essential for companies of all kinds.

 

Today, irrespective of where a company is based, if it does business on a global scale – which a lot of companies based in Vietnam now do – they need to understand the best practices and measures for compliance adopted by companies across various geographies. It is increasingly becoming essential for them to be able to smoothly and responsibly conduct business with counterparts worldwide. Whether they are component suppliers to the automobile giants, outsourced partners for retail chains or emerging manufacturers setting up projects overseas, knowledge of global compliance norms is becoming an integral part of their competitive DNA.

 

Finally, we must not ignore the fact that education is the right and foundation for success for every individual. It is heartening to see schools and universities taking active interest in encouraging IT education especially among students. Oracle believes in the power of education to inspire change and is one of the many corporate organizations driving this as a special initiative. In our endeavor to address the increasing gap between the demand for skilled IT professionals and availability of such talent in Vietnam, Oracle Vietnam, initiated Think.com program engaging with students and teachers in Vietnam. 

 

SOA and Open standards will feature prominently in a growing number of organizations’ IT infrastructure investments

As organizations across Asia Pacific are being forced to respond faster to growing competitive and customers challenges, many of them will look at putting in place a service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a differentiator for their business. With SOA, organisations have a flexible, adaptable IT infrastructure, which will enable them to become more agile while at the same time reduce the cost of managing their IT environments.

Organizations will continue to seek ways of lowering IT costs

Organizations of all sizes will continue to look for ways to reduce costs across their business IT infrastructure. Grid computing with Real Application Clusters, and integrated technology and applications software with industry-specific functionality and adaptive business processeswill help dramatically reduce the cost of software implementations and management.

 

Increasing focus on Business Intelligence - Gaining real-time, complete and accurate information for decision-making

Business Intelligence (BI) will continue to be a technology priority for CIOs. A Gartner survey conducted in early 2006 with 1,400 CIOs had ranked BI as the number one technology priority.

 

Historically, BI has been ‘pigeon-holed’ largely for backward-looking analysis such as reporting and query type applications. The next wave of Business Intelligence (BI) will be used more pervasively across organisations and their extended enterprise to provide strategic real-time analytical information for business decision making.

 

Companies will gain more complete and timely business views and also drives more effective actions and processes, through combining database and analytic applications as well as embedding BI tools into business processes.

 

 

Increasing acceptance and demand for “software as a service”

Software as a service is a term that describes the next generation of software delivery, implementation and management. Increasingly, organisations in Asia Pacific are recoginsing the value of software as a service. Organisations want their key IT people to focus on activities that have a demonstrable return on investment (ROI). By outsourcing key elements of their IT operations to an expert provider of those services, businesses are achieving greater efficiencies, reducing IT expenses to a predictable monthly cost and improving the reliability, scalability and security of their IT systems.

 

Hosted (‘software as a service’) solutions has received much attention in 2006 as one of the technologies that promises flexibility with faster set up and lower implementation costs, while on premise solutions continue to be a key deployment option. The emergence of hosted solutions have given customers the option to select from hybrid combinations of both hosted (SaaS) and on-premise solutions to match specific business needs.

 

Oracle’s continues to be fully committed to staying in the forefront of the industry by focusing on simplifying IT systems, providing industry expertise and developing complete solutions to help minimise software integration costs. We continue to enable our customers to gain better information and increase reliability across their systems, while spending less. Our leadership position is a direct result of our track record of technological innovation and ability to provide customers with what they need. This focus is what has enabled Oracle to be the strategic partner of choice for large and small companies in Vietnam and across Asia Pacific.