Gartner Says Worldwide Application Integration and Middleware Industry Experiences Steady Increase in 2004

Business Wire, April 12, 2005

STAMFORD, Conn. -- Gartner Analysts to Examine the State of the Industry During the Upcoming Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit, April 18-20 in Los Angeles

Worldwide application integration, middleware and portal new license revenue totalled $6.7 million in 2004, a 5.8 percent increase from 2003 revenue of $6.3 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.

"This market will continue to grow at a slow but positive pace for most segments," said Joanne Correia, research vice president at Gartner. "This is because of the widespread need to bundle this type of technology into other software market segments, such as enterprise applications, mobile and wireless solutions, integration suites and other applications in which a message-oriented technology lends itself well."

IBM again had a commanding lead in the worldwide AIM industry with 37.2 percent market share in 2004 (see Table 1). IBM was the market leader in application servers, portals, message-oriented middleware (MOM) and transaction processing middleware (TPM). For the first time, Microsoft moved into the top 5 ranking, as it grew 63.1 percent in 2004.

Table 1

Worldwide Application Integration and Middleware New License Revenue
Estimates for 2004 (Millions of Dollars)

                    2004  2004 Market    2003  2003 Market  2003-2004
Company           Revenue   Share (%)  Revenue   Share (%)  Growth (%)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
IBM              2,495.4        37.2  2,295.5        36.3         8.7
BEA Systems        482.3         7.2    521.0         8.2        -7.4
Fujitsu            421.4         6.3    405.2         6.4         4.0
Oracle             292.2         4.4    259.6         4.1        12.5
Microsoft          285.4         4.3    175.0         2.8        63.1
Others           2,723.7        40.6  2,675.3        42.3         1.8
Total            6,700.5       100.0  6,331.6       100.0         5.8
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: Gartner Dataquest (April 2005)

Most modern enterprise application projects have a requirement for portal, integration, business process management (BPM) and business component engineering within the context of the same project.

"Application platform suites (APS) and the separate composite products within several segments of the AIM market are designed to meet this new reality of software engineering," Ms. Correia said. "Vendors of application servers, integration suites and portal products have recognized the benefits for a synergy between these now-fundamental software infrastructure technologies."

A modern portal product is programmable and thus performs platform middleware functions. Application integration and middleware (AIM) is the system software or runtime infrastructure used to provide:

--Intra-application middleware for constructing individual multi-tiered applications

--Interapplication middleware for communicating between individually designed applications

Gartner analysts will provide more detailed analysis on the future of the AIM industry during the upcoming Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit, April 18-20 at the Westin Century Plaza Hotel and Spa in Los Angeles.

The Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit (AIWS) offers CIOs, architects, software and integration leaders, and IT directors a comprehensive overview and understanding of successful integration, Web services and architecture strategies with analysis and recommendation to ensure long term success. AIWS will explain how IT technologies, methods, roles and responsibilities must evolve in the service-oriented era, address business challenges and improve operational efficiency. For more information, please visit www.gartner.com/us/aiwswc.> Members of the media can register for the event by contacting Wanda Whitson at 408-468-8312 or wanda.whitson@gartner.com.

About Gartner

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