By ONG BOON KIAT

ASIAN enterprises will look to technologies that can help stretch their IT dollar in the year of the Ox, according to a BizIT poll of more than 50 regional tech chiefs.

And with the spirit of prudent spending expected to keep the lid on enterprise's propensity to try out new and higher-risk technologies, it is no surprise that many vendors gave familiar-sounding names when asked which technologies will dominate in 2009. Among them: service-oriented architecture (SOA), virtualisation and 'green' energy-efficient data centre technologies.

The three were on the list of IBM Singapore managing director Teresa Lim in her reply to BizIT. SOA is a way of creating reusable software building blocks - called services - that can combine with other services to form new business applications, hence saving on the cost of having to build applications from scratch.

Virtualisation lets IT departments carve out multiple computing environments within the same server or PC, upping hardware utilisation and postponing IT capital expenses. Green data centre technologies can help firms drastically slash utility bills, given the inexorable rise in power consumption in data centres and high energy costs.

Ms Lim also named a fourth trend for 2009: Web 2.0 technologies, which refer to the new wave of Web technologies like social networking, blogging and video-sharing.

Like Ms Lim, Ben Watson, managing director of UK-based IT consulting firm PTS Consulting, also voted for virtualisation. 'With capital expenditure being reduced, it is easy to see virtualisation providing a better return than purchasing new hardware, while reducing hardware real estate also optimises existing data centre space,' he said.

A different kind of virtualisation, a long-standing technology that has to do with making enterprise storage more efficient, will continue to be popular with businesses this year, said Suresh Nair, managing director of NetApp Asean. Also on his list is data deduplication, a technology that alleviates the common problem of backing up multiple sets of the same data.

Tan Yen Yen, vice-president and managing director of HP Singapore, said carbon emissions management, green computing and cloud computing will be hot this year. The latter refers to Web and network-connected IT systems that let workers run desktop-like applications without having to store anything on their computing desktop. Google Apps is a common example of this technology.

Also mooting cloud computing are Steve Felice, president of Dell Asia-Pacific and Japan; Yaj Malik, area vice-president, Asean, Citrix Systems; Stuart Spiteri, director of Asia-Pacific, Akamai Technologies; and Gery Messer, president, Asia Pacific and Japan, Red Hat.

Both Tom Cheong, Cisco managing director for Singapore and Brunei, and Andy Cocks, director of solutions development and strategy of Datacraft Asia, say video conferencing will be big this year. Explained Mr Cocks: 'If companies are to reduce travel costs by 30-40 per cent, people are going to use video conferencing.'

Noboru Oi, regional group CEO of Fujitsu Asia sees strong interest for software-as-a-service (SaaS) and managed services, driven by enterprises aiming to slash their IT ownership costs in the coming year. David Brett, president of Amadeus Asia-Pacific, said more firms from Singapore's and Asia-Pacific's travel sector will tap online sales channels to cut operating costs and expand their reach. Madrid-based Amadeus provides IT solutions for the travel industry.

3G technologies should grow strongly in 2009, especially in emerging markets, while a budding wireless broadband technology called Long Term Evolution (LTE) could make inroads this year. This is the view of Ben Cardwell, vice-president for Asia-Pacific and China of Andrew, the wireless arm of network infrastructure solutions giant CommScope Inc. This could lead to an increase in mobile data services as well as coverage areas in the region, he said.

Another networking trend that can be expected to be under the spotlight soon is 802.11n, a wireless network standard expected to be ratified by mid-2009, according to 3Com Asia-Pacific vice-president and general manager Peter Chai.

'In Singapore, 802.11n will be important to enhance the country's logistics and manufacturing hub status by providing high performance, reliable wireless control and tracking solutions not possible with previous generation wireless systems. It is also suited for Singapore's growing education sector and similar environments that need to support high bandwidth for a high density of users in a small setting like a classroom,' he said.

Lastly, Chip Salyards, vice-president for Asia-Pacific, BMC Software, believes that 2009 will be a year where any money for IT must have a 'very short path to producing a tangible return of investment'.

On virtualisation and cloud computing - two trends favoured by many vendors in this poll - he urged caution: 'Unchecked virtual server sprawl can quickly create a hornet's nest from a management perspective. Proper controls and management processes will need to be in place before going virtual, and management tools that give visibility into the virtual network will be critical.'

With cloud computing, the volatile economic backdrop will make organisations more hesitant to rush in as first movers as any backlash could have 'career-ending' consequences, he said.

'We say that conservatives will win in business. Maintaining tight controls and being fiscally conservative will be a requirement for businesses to make it through the economic tunnel. More corporate jets will be grounded, sales conferences will be on a shoestring budget, if not cancelled, and executive compensation will remain flat at best. It will be a time to tighten the belt and go on a diet,' Mr Salyards said.

This article was first published in The Business Times on January 05, 2009.