SOA, BPM, and Hardware vs. Software

The first meetings in Beijing have been quite informative. SOA, BPM, even BI and CEP are on the minds of IT executives, integrators, and analysts here. Even had a spirited discussion of virtualization and cloud computing at the analyst firm CCID Monday afternoon.

Yet existing side to this leading-edge mentality is the fact that much of China's IT industry was still thinking of "hardware vs. software" until very recently. Brand-name hardware was the highest priority, and "only recently have executives thought that software is the important thing that will make a difference," according to several people with whom I spoke.

The reason for this seeming incongruity is speed. The China market is simply growing too fast for people to sit back and analyze change. I actually heard the term "paradigm shift" today. Not surprising for an IT market that is expected to "slow" to 14% growth this year, with enterprise IT software pegged at 30% growth. I heard these numbers several times.