During the first half of the year, the collaborative applications segment spearheaded investment growth in the software market in Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ). The total A/NZ software market reached almost 7.5 billion over the first six months of this year. This is showing double-digit annual growth in both countries, according to the latest figures from industry analyst firm IDC.

In terms of dealer’s income, the market grew by approximately 20.6 per cent, year-over-year, in Australia and almost 20.4 per cent, year-over-year, in New Zealand during the first half of this year.

As the pandemic forced us to remote work, the collaboration applications segment has led the charge, claiming the greatest annual growth rate of the entire software market,  reaching around US$257.8 million across A/NZ.

According to IDC, businesses continue to invest in team collaborative applications in order to support productivity, effective communications with clients and partners, and promote engagement among employees in a new hybrid environment.

At the same time, a huge number of organisations are launching their digitisation journeys and influencing digital technologies.

Artificial intelligence platforms showed the second strongest year-over-year increase of any segment in the software market, after collaboration apps, growing by almost 35 %across A/NZ and reaching  approximately US$111.5 million. This rapid growth means strong demand from A/NZ organisations in modernisation and the streamlining of core business processes, according to the analyst firm.

Moreover, the fulfilment of AI software services and intelligent knowledge discovery tools is on the rise, supporting decision-making and forecasting, and improving business outcomes.

According to Anastasia Antonova, who is a senior market analyst at IDC A/NZ, organisations across Tasman are investing in intelligent process automation tools and leveraging AI capabilities. In that way, they modify operational processes and improve customer and business data analysis in their collective bid to meet individual customer needs.

The third strongest annual growth during this period of time is about 31%, reaching approximately US$164.6 million and it belongs to the integration and orchestration middleware software. The rapid growth of integration software has been largely driven by legacy modernisation, hybrid integration, workflow and process automation and application programming interface (API)-led innovation initiatives, according to IDC.

Research by Gartner,suggested that global AI software spending will grow roughly 21.3% to about US$62 billion during the next year.

The analyst firm indicated that knowledge management, virtual assistants, autonomous vehicles, digital workplace and crowdsourced data would make up the top five use cases for AI software spending in 2022. Gartner senior research director Alys Woodward said:

“Use cases that deliver significant business value, yet can be scaled to reduce risk, are critical to demonstrate the impact of AI investment to business stakeholders.”

The report also noted that the demand for AI technologies and associated market growth is closely tied to organisational AI maturity levels.