SWEDISH enterprise applications company IFS AB announced on November 21 that its long-standing partner, ProV International Inc., is expanding the former’s footprint in the Philippines.
The partnership, according to IFS AB, will focus on growing sales of the firm’s applications suite called IFS Applications. The suite, IFS AB said, enables businesses to handle service and asset management, manufacturing, projects management and supply-chain management (SCM).
IFS added that it and the Tampa, Florida-headquartered ProV International will focus on opportunities in the manufacturing and utilities industries in the Philippines.
“Agility and reducing complexity is key to our business,” ProV International CEO Ajit Nair was quoted in a statement as saying. “I look forward to developing this partnership in the Philippines market. We’ve had great feedback from our global team about IFS and we would love to have the same impact in the Philippines.”
IFS AB’s announcement came after International Data Corp. (IDC) forecast technology spending in the manufacturing sector in the Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) region will reach over $36 billion by 2020, or a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.34 percent from 2016 to 2020.
“High levels of industrial automation and the push for increased operational efficiencies have resulted in technology investments that aid in mitigating productivity-related challenges,” IDC Manufacturing Insights Research Manager Sampath Kumar Venkataswamy was quoted in a November 22 statement as saying. “Systems integration and consolidation remains one of the top investment areas for most manufacturing organizations that are on the path of implementing smart manufacturing platforms.”
Venkataswamy added that “the push to increase visibility on the shop floor and across the value chain will continue to drive the corresponding technology investment efforts in applications, such as SCM and predictive analytics.”
According to IDC, APeJ information technology spending in manufacturing is dominated by the high-tech equipment sector, followed by chemical and the automotive industry. From a technology perspective, the spending on IT services is expected to reach over $14 billion by 2020, while software-related spending is expected to grow 6.91 percent CAGR for the same period and reach over $12 billion.
Software spending includes engineering applications, operations management and SCM software. However, IDC expects lower growth for hardware-related spending and is expected to reach only $9.4 billion by 2020.