Bio-IT market in APAC at $ 3.6 bn by 2006: IDC

BANGALORE: According to analysis from IDC’s new research and advisory

service, Asia Pacific Bio-IT Infrastructure, the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan)

Bio-IT market will increase at a CAGR of 56 per cent to reach $ 3.6 billion by

2006.

The life sciences race in Asia Pacific has now kick started, as many

countries in the region are investing heavily to position themselves as genuine

players in the global biosciences industry. Factors driving this growth include

rapid acceptance of new biology methods and informatics-based drug design.

IT provides the necessary tools to create, organize, analyze, store, retrieve

and share genomic, proteomic, chemical and clinical data in the life sciences.

IDC’s research has demonstrated that between 15 and 50 per cent of capital

expenditure from the majority of life sciences organizations will be spent on

the required technology stack to support the drug discovery processes. IDC’s

Asia-Pacific Bio-IT initiative will provide end users and IT vendors with

ongoing analysis of market dynamics, forecasts, user requirements, and

projections essential to shaping effective business strategies.

"The huge advances in biotechnology are dramatically impacting the whole

of society; from healthcare, food and agriculture, chemical and industrial

materials, through to energy and warfare. The IT industry will be the enabler to

bring about the vast majority of these business and scientific advances,"

said Philip Fersht, director, Bio-IT and Life Sciences Research, IDC

Asia-Pacific, who leads this initiative. "The Asia/Pacific Life Sciences

market is set to explode with dramatic increases in public investment, which

will be followed by heavy funding from both private investors, banks,

pharmaceutical and venture capitalist firms."

IDC’s Asia-Pacific Bio-IT intelligence service is dedicated to tracking

this industry’s financing and identifying its re-investment into the necessary

IT stack. Moreover, IDC’s ongoing work is focused on country-level strategies

and partnerships among government institutions, life sciences organizations and

IT suppliers to provide the complete spectrum of region-wide Bio-IT and life

sciences research.

IDC’s Asia-Pacific Bio-IT initiative will comprise:

• A new research subscription and advisory service entitled Asia-Pacific
  
  Bio-IT Infrastructure
• Custom research and consulting services in such areas as brand
  
  positioning, product channel and alliance strategy, and best practice
  
  implementation
• An industry workgroup for end users and technology infrastructure vendors
  
  operating in the life sciences industry

Commenting on the initiative, Dane Anderson, vice-president, Internet and

Computing Systems, IDC Asia-Pacific, said: "The launch of IDC’s Bio-IT

initiative is a direct response to our research findings and feedback from

leaders in the field that their work is becoming increasingly dependent on

information technology. IDC’s 38-year history of predicting and analyzing new

IT markets will serve us well in delivering timely, relevant insight and

analysis on the emerging life sciences industry."

The Asia-Pacific Bio-IT Infrastructure intelligence and advisory service will

provide insight and guidance in key IT infrastructure areas, such as:

• Servers used to support a wide range of workloads, including
  
  computational, database, and security
• All storage devices
• A broad set of software technologies and products, including databases,
  
  Web services, middleware, analytics, and security
• Services to support or enhance the overall IT infrastructure
• Clients, including workstations, PCs, personal workstations, and thin
  
  clients
• Standard networking equipment

In addition, the service is designed to tackle the following issues:

• Asia/Pacific Bio-IT Infrastructure Forecast and Analysis 2001-2006 (Market
  
  segmentation by technology, and life sciences)
• Partnerships, Alliances and Joint Ventures: Case Studies in cooperation
  
  within the BioSciences (Analysis of key segments and players in market)
• Country-level bio-ecosystem profiles of Singapore, Australia, India,
  
  China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and rest of Asia/Pacific: Analysis of IT
  
  vendor strategies across Asia/Pacific countries and regional variations
  
  across BioSciences markets. Profiles of countries’ government
  
  institutions, R & D organizations, biotechs, pharmaceutical firms and
  
  technology suppliers
• Profiles of IT vendor strategies and successes in the Asia/Pacific
  
  BioSciences marketplace to gain positioning and mindshare
• User requirements across key bio segments (Analysis of key user
  
  requirements/buying criteria in each market sector)
• Emerging business models in biotech and what it takes to win in this
  
  segment