AIM Market Grows to $15.1 Billion: Gartner

According to a recent Gartner study - application infrastructure and middleware (AIM) software market has grown to $15.1 billion worldwide in 2008. The market demonstrated a growth of 6.9% as compared to 2007.
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Among the 12 segments in which Gartner divides the AIM market, integration appliances were the fastest-growing segment with a 44% increase in 2008, followed by service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance technologies, business process management suites (BPMSs), and enterprise service bus suites, which all grew at double-digit rates. These segments continued to benefit from the demand for SOA.

"Both the slowdown of the economy and the effects of the acquisition of BEA Systems, the second-largest middleware player, by Oracle played a major role in shaping the performance of the market," said Fabrizio Biscotti, research director at Gartner. There has been a gradual reduction of spending with consequent downsizing, delay or cancellation of projects that has undoubtedly hit vendors' revenues. On the other hand, an acquisition of such magnitude has led to the typical uncertainty that always follows major M&A activities- said Biscotti.

As the global economy goes through recession tunneling, Gartner expects that the AIM market will experience a slight decline of 0.8% in 2009. "Oracle's acquisition of BEA had a profound effect in the 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 analyst at Gartner, and lead analyst for AIM in Asia Pacific.

IBM maintained its leading position and accounted for 30.8 % of the total software revenue in 2008, followed by Oracle and Microsoft. However, the top five vendors accounted for approximately 53 % of the pie. The AIM market includes 12 segments, including general-purpose portal products, business-process-management-enabling technologies, and application integration and platform middleware.

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BY CXOtoday Staff
Source：CXOtoday.com

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