SaaS and WiMax BroadBand – A Beautiful Marriage in Asia-Pacific

So why is it so? Let’s take a look at the stats. We already have significant growth of SaaS in the Asia Pacific region with 85% CAGR (Compounding Average Growth Rate) and are anticipating that it will be around US$1.1Bn by 2010. With this in mind you wonder how it further it can go with a region that boasts 3.7Bn (56.5% of world population) people. We already have the most internet users at around 418 mill. when you compare to the Americas at 343 mill. and Europe at 322 mill. with respective populations of 891m and 810m.

Well one major enabler of Software as a Service is that of the broadband foot print. Mature markets like The Americas and Europe have significant infrastructure with which to deliver broadband and Asia Pacific has been no slouch with 40% of the world’s broad band subscribers, in fact, 95% of this is via DSL. What starts to become exciting is when you consider “catalyst” technologies such as WiMax  that can take the last mile of broadband into territories that copper was near impossible or cost prohibitive to lay. WiMax will make up 60% of the wireless broadband market by 2008 with Asia as one of the hottest market. As for catalytic behaviour, Asia-Pacific will account for 45% of the World’s total WiMax user base by 2009, reaching 3.8 mill. This begins to open many more corners of Asia Pacific where no infrastructure and no legacy exists. The population in these areas has been subject to the lack of interest of incumbent Telcos and with the support of respective government many new players (eg. WISPs – Wireless Internet Service Providers) will play a pivotal role in giving millions more access to applications that are SaaS delivered due to the advent web 2.0, including the internet killer app of VOIP.

Bring it on! Go WiMax, Go WISPs, Go SaaS !