Sydney, Australia – Organisations across Asia Pacific are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to modernise application development and maintenance (ADM), while seeking to maintain oversight of security, quality and business continuity, according to a new report from Information Services Group (ISG).
The report for Asia Pacific examines how enterprises are updating complex IT environments spanning legacy applications, packaged platforms, cloud-native systems and AI-enabled business workflows.
Rather than seeking additional engineering capacity alone, organisations are looking for service providers that can improve software delivery through greater reuse, speed and reliability, the report says.
“Organisations in Asia Pacific need application change that is faster, more reliable and fully accountable. They are embedding AI throughout software lifecycles while maintaining clear oversight of security, traceability and quality,” said Michael Gale, Partner and Regional Leader of ISG Asia Pacific.
India remains a major engineering and delivery hub, but enterprises are increasingly seeking ADM services that reflect local business and regulatory requirements, rather than relying exclusively on offshore outsourcing. Demand is growing in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand for local engagement, regulatory familiarity, proximity to customers and industry-specific delivery.
AI is being incorporated across the software lifecycle, including requirements analysis, code generation, documentation, testing, remediation and release readiness. Organisations are also using observability, AI for IT operations (AIOps), knowledge automation and self-healing concepts to make application operations more proactive.
Continuous testing and AI-enabled test generation are being adopted to improve confidence in software releases as delivery cycles accelerate. Companies are also turning to predictive quality analytics to validate software across continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes, application programming interfaces (APIs), packaged applications and cloud platforms.
The report identifies technical debt, legacy dependencies, enterprise resource planning (ERP) integrations and hybrid infrastructure as ongoing challenges for organisations modernising their application portfolios. Enterprises are assessing their applications and sequencing modernisation programmes before moving selected workloads towards cloud-native architectures. The approach is intended to protect business-critical systems while applications and operating models change.
These considerations are particularly relevant to financial services, manufacturing, communications, infrastructure, mobility and asset-intensive industries, ISG says.
“Application modernisation, maintenance and assurance must work as an integrated lifecycle. Enterprises are seeking providers that use operational insight to shape application improvement and help manage risk across complex estates,” said Maharshi Pandya, ISG Senior Lead Analyst and Lead Author of the report.
