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Remote Work Demand Impacts Enterprise Software Apps

During the remainder of this year, executive leadership teams will be focused on IT infrastructure that enables the "Future of Work", hybrid work models, and flexible working methodologies that make it possible for knowledge workers to access essential corporate applications from anywhere.

Meanwhile, fueled by an ongoing digital transformation investment, worldwide revenue in the enterprise software applications market grew 7.5 percent year-over-year in 2019 to reach $224.6 billion, according to the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

As more businesses undergo digital transformation to meet the challenges of the current economic disruption, modern software with its properties of automation, connectivity, and visibility has become critical to achieving a competitive edge.

Enterprise Software Applications Market Development

Enterprise applications are the engine of the business, providing the data, intelligence, and computational tools necessary to function in the current economic environment, and every line of business within an organization depends on multiple software applications to function.

"Digital transformation initiatives are bringing impactful changes to organizations such as the ability to work anywhere and anytime, identifying new insights because of cognitive and predictive processes, and reshaping the enterprise experience using modern and cloud-based enterprise applications," said Mickey North Rizza, vice president at IDC, "Enterprise applications are the foundation of business processes, employee engagement, and customer experience."

The global enterprise market trends include:
  • IDC expects the worldwide enterprise applications market to have a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.4 percent with revenues reaching $265.7 billion by 2024.
  • The share of public cloud software revenue is forecast to grow from 40.3 percent in 2019 to 56.8 percent in 2024, as growth opportunities move heavily in favor of cloud applications.
  • Enterprise application vendors are enabling new use cases by utilizing big data or analytics and machine learning to bring more actionable insights across a broader workstream.
  • Vendors are also working to automate lower-level tasks within the applications. IDC expects this trend to continue and to be a key factor in determining market positioning among enterprise application vendors in the future.

The enterprise software applications market consists of the following secondary markets: enterprise resource management, customer relationship management, engineering applications, supply chain applications, and production applications. Each of these secondary markets consists of multiple functional markets.

IDC's software market sizing and forecasts are presented in terms of commercial software revenue. The term commercial software is used to distinguish commercially available software from custom software. Commercial software revenue typically includes fees for initial and continued right-to-use commercial software licenses.

Outlook for Enterprise Software Applications Growth

According to the IDC assessment, CIOs and CTOs are closely monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic impact on IT apps and services. While software spending will be one of the areas least affected by the pandemic, the spending focus has moved further toward cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS).

Even the most reluctant enterprise IT customers are now starting to adopt more public cloud offerings. This acceleration is being driven by the modernization of technology portfolios, leading to IT vendor product suite, ecosystem, and integration approaches that satisfy more IT buyer demand.

"Organizations want to fill in remote working technology gaps now, start or finish digital transformation initiatives from the pre-pandemic time, and re-adjust their long-term strategies and plans to enable the quickest pathway to the digital enterprise," concludes Ms. North Rizza.

I believe IT vendors that deliver a Hybrid IT (on-premises and cloud computing) architecture foundation for 'Distributed Workforce' use cases will have a compelling strategic advantage. Moreover, the most capable 'Application Delivery Network' solutions will provide load balancing, security controls, and traffic management within enterprise data centers and public cloud environments.

Forward-thinking Hybrid IT deployment strategies will also empower the Hybrid Workforce movement. Together, these key market trends will be the catalyst for 'Next Normal' scenarios.

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