Singapore, August 22:

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are expected to fuel the next boom in infotech (IT) services across the Asia-Pacific region, researchers said in a report today.

By the end of 2009, the region outside of Japan will see revenues cross $17.7 billion on IT services alone from $11 billion in 2005, according to Access Markets International (AMI) Partners. Nearly half is expected to come from medium-size business with 100 to 999 employees, said the New York-based firm specialising in infotech research.

“SME’s already play a major role in the economy of many Asian countries,” The Business Times quoted Anurag Agrawal, AMI’s chief operating officer, as saying. “By 2009, the 27 million SMEs in the region will grow seven per cent.” “SMEs are big spenders on outsourced computing support, given their limited resources to maintain an in-house team,” Diana Ng, AMI’s Singapore-based research analyst, said. A boom in outsourcing and managed services will help fuel the region’s market, according to International Data Corp.

It predicted the Asia-Pacific region outside of Japan will see managed services cross $14.6 billion this year, from $13.2 billion last year. Many firms prefer to engage IT service vendors to keep operating costs down.

Among the companies offering managed services are NCS, SCS, Datacraft, Fujitsu, Avaya, Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Ericson, Nokia, Siemens, IBM Global Services, AT&T and Hewlett-Packard.