Forty percent of employees in Asia Pacific will be mobile workers by 2015, according to IDC's worldwide mobile worker population forecast 2011-2015.

IDC forecasts 556 million mobile phones to be shipped by 2016 in the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) or APEJ region.

Out of these 556 million, emerging markets, which tend to have significantly younger populations, will account for 87 percent of the total shipments.

The research firm suggests enterprises will foster a highly collaborative, virtual, mobile, multi-media and multi-dimensional environment in order to succeed in the future workspace.

Half of the population across the Asia Pacific region is under the age of 30 today and these tech-savvy employees are transforming the hyper-competitive Asia Pacific region workspace.

IDC notes that these employees are accustomed to being mobile and virtual with strong multi-tasking abilities. For this reason, they are keen on using devices such as smartphones and media tablets to further enhance their work and life experiences.

Virtualising the desktop environments

Currently, the desktop seems to be the work horse of Asia Pacific enterprises, and thus virtualising the desktop environments will enable the mobile workforce in the region to access and create content anywhere and on any device.

Virtualising the desktop environments will also allow IT to properly manage and secure all types of end-user device, corporate-owned or otherwise, from a centralised management platform.

IDC also predicts Asia/ Pacific region's centralised virtual desktop (desktop virtualisation) to account for nine percent or US$114m of the total worldwide market by 2016.

"In our region where mobility is the foundation of collaboration and communication and increasingly entertainment and payment services, the future workspace will inevitably have to evolve to adapt to our fast-paced society where the next service or product, customer engagement and delivery will have to be faster and better to meet customers' increasing expectations," said Sandra Ng, group vice president of ICT practice at IDC Asia Pacific.

"Going forward, it will be a vicious cycle where collaboration and competition have to come hand-in-hand in order to grow and survive in the world's largest emerging market."

1 

View Vendors' Profiles.

QlikTech Singapore Pte Ltd Barracuda Networks Kingdee International Software Group (H.K.) Ltd. Fuji Xerox Asia Pacific ICFE Group of Companies ThoughtBuzz Pte Ltd Check Point Holding (S) Pte Ltd NEC Asia Pacific Pte Ltd Crown Systems (S) Pte Ltd Savi Technology Asia Pte Ltd IDT Telecom Asia Pacific Limited CommScope Solutions (Singapore) Pte Ltd Quest Software Singapore Pte Ltd