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Revenue in Application Infrastructure
and Middleware (AIM) software market totaled $15.9 billion worldwide
in 2009, a 2.8 percent increase from 2008, according to Gartner. In
2008, worldwide AIM revenue grew 7.1 percent and totaled $15.5
billion. "All factors considered in 2009 the AIM market
performed better than most software segments. The poor state of
economy played a major role in shaping the overall performance of the
market. Budget cuts forced a reduction in spending with consequent
downsizing, delay or cancellation of software projects, which started
in the first quarter of 2009 with a de facto spending freeze. This
has hit vendors revenues and in 2009 as far as growth rates are
concerned, was the worst year ever for AIM spending. The increasing
adoption of open source has hit commercial revenues. Nevertheless, on
the back of strong drivers such as service-oriented architecture
(SOA) and business process management (BPM) adoption and buoyant
demand for application integration, the overall AIM market has
remained positive, unlike most software segments, where revenues
generally declined,” said Fabrizio Biscotti, Research Director,
Gartner.
While 2008 saw a major shakeout in the
market following some major acquisitions. The year 2009 was quieter
in regards to mergers and acquisitions as vendors capitalized on
their previous acquisition moves. As soon as recovery occurs, Gartner
expects growth to be solid for AIM technology, because pent-up demand
has grown over time.
The top five vendors accounted for
approximately 58 percent of the AIM market in 2009, up from 52
percent in 2008. IBM maintained its leading position and accounted
for 31 percent of total AIM software revenue in 2009. Among other
large players, some shifts occurred with Oracle being one of the
fastest-growing vendors, becoming the market share leader in
application servers and narrowing the gap in enterprise service bus
suites, followed by Microsoft and Software AG which both gained
market share in 2009. Of the 12 segments in which Gartner divides the
AIM market, SOA governance technologies, message-oriented middleware,
AIM appliances and
suites were the fastest-growing segments with
double-digit increases in 2009. "SOA governance technologies are
an innovative and dynamic market where there are still many smaller
players, implying that there is likely to be consolidation in the
near future, with products being subsumed into wider IT governance
suites in the medium term. The BPM suites market continues to show
strong growth, demonstrating particular value in a challenging
economy. This value comes partly through enabling process automation
that supports cost-cutting initiatives, and by helping companies
focus on quickly improving their business processes," said
Teresa Jones, Senior Analyst , Gartner.
North America and Western Europe are
the largest regional markets, followed by Japan and Asia-Pacific.
Emerging regions have been the fastest-growing with good performance
in Latin America, the Middle-East and Africa and Asia-Pacific. The
big disappointment has been the Eastern Europe, which went through a
challenging year, showing a dismal performance on par with the mature
regions. Asia-Pacific, despite being positive and above the worldwide
average, posted results that were below expectations. "In 2008,
Oracle's acquisition of BEA had a profound effect in Asia-Pacific,
because BEA historically had been a significant vendor controlling a
huge portion of the regional market, particularly in China,"
said Asheesh Raina, Principal, Gartner. Raina, the Lead Analyst-AIM,
Asia Pacific also added, "The same stood true for Sun
Microsystems since the announcement of the acquisition by Oracle in
2009, because organizations in the region had been using Sun
offerings for quite some time. The uncertainty surrounding the
outcome has driven potential or undecided customers to further delay
their purchases."
"The AIM market continues to be in
a creative turmoil with vendors at the high end continuing to
consolidate with major acquisitions and sound organic growth, while
there is a huge variety of up-and-coming players, particularly in
some hot spots such as low- latency messaging (LLM), managed file
transfer (MFT), extreme transaction processing (XTP), complex event
processing
and business process analysis (BPA)," stated
Biscotti. "On top of that there is a vibrant activity around
cloud with strong repercussions on AIM offerings. We see mounting
attention to APaaS offerings from an increasingly large number of
organizations looking for fast return of their software development
investments. Software-as-hardware is a nascent trend demonstrated by
the solid growth of AIM appliances."
The AIM market includes 12 segments
that comprise general-purpose portal products,
business-process-management-enabling technologies, application
integration and platform middleware,
business-to-business/multi-enterprise products, integration as a
service, SOA governance technologies, and AIM appliances.