As part of its 2008 predictions for Asia-Pacific, ICT research and advisory firm XMG said outsourcing and Linux adoption will continue to gain momentum in the region, citing the prevailing business conditions in the Philippines and other countries.

XMG, a Canada-based research outfit founded by Filipino Lauro Vives, said the need for "high-quality but low-cost service delivery teams" would pave the way for offshoring and outsourcing to grow by 30 percent in Asia Pacific, while the prohibitive cost of software would lead companies to consider open source applications.

The research firm said Asia Pacific is expected to garner 24 percent or $ 86.8 billion of the global outsourcing revenue share by the end of 2008. Of this, 70 percent or $ 50 billion will be generated by the top five offshoring Asia Pacific nations: India, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

Linux, on the other hand, will make major inroads into government, enterprise, and the consumer market in Asia Pacific as Microsoft’s Vista continues to stagger towards wider adoption, it said.

"Moreover, with the cost of Microsoft Office products considered cost prohibitive compounded with the high prevalence of software piracy in the Asia Pacific countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, this further propels the search for alternatives in open source applications," it added.

XMG is also estimating that more than 43 percent of large corporations in the region are seriously exploring the advantages of open source software.

Other predictions for the Asia Pacific region include:

• Minimizing risks is still the top management concerns of Asia Pacific CIOs.
• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) will become a priority in 2008.
• More Asia Pacific countries will adopt international standards and best practices to improve business process, integrate across borders, and participate in the globalization of commerce.
• M-commerce in Asia Pacific will see a steady 18.4-percent growth as self-service applications provide significant value to mobile and traveling users.
• SMB IT spending in Asia Pacific will increase by 28 percent in 2008 or $ 31.2 billion.
• Globalization and the brisk movement of IT talent in the market will put the limelight on HR practitioners to meet the talent crunch.
• Business continuity plans among captive and service delivery centers will increase.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) is projected to grow 17 percent year on year initially driven primarily by the synergistic effects of SMB demand and provisioning of outsourcing-like services by vendors.