Gartner Says Worldwide Application Integration and Middleware Market Increased 7 Percent in 2005; Gartner Analysts to Examine the State of the Industry at Upcoming Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit, June 19-21 in San Diego

Business Wire, June 8, 2006

STAMFORD, Conn. -- Worldwide application integration and middleware (AIM) total software revenue totaled $8.5 billion in 2005, a 7.1 percent increase over 2004 revenue, according to Gartner, Inc.

"The application integration and middleware market is in a volatile phase because integration design patterns and technology are evolving rapidly," said Joanne Correia, research vice president at Gartner. "Software suppliers are making fundamental changes in their product architectures, embracing standards and verticalizing their offerings, new suppliers are entering the market, and weaker players have disappeared at a high rate. This complicates the task of application architects who must deal with shifting technology, supplier turnover and their own learning curves."

In 2005, the top five vendors accounted for 69 percent of the total worldwide AIM market (see Table 1). IBM maintained a commanding lead in the market, with 37.2 percent market share in 2005. While IBM is the clear market share leader in message-oriented middleware (MOM), integration suites, portal products and transaction processing middleware (TPM), it faces fierce competition in enterprise service bus (ESB) and B2B software. BEA's continued strength in the application server segment helped solidify its spot as the No. 2 AIM software vendor worldwide. Oracle and Microsoft were the only top-tier vendors to post double-digit growth in 2005.

Table 1
Worldwide 2005 Vendor Revenue Estimates for AIM Software,
Based on Total Software Revenue (Millions of Dollars)

                         2005 Market          2004 Market   2004-2005
Company             2005   Share (%)     2004    Share (%)  Growth (%)
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IBM              3,159.4       37.2   2,959.8        37.3         6.7
BEA Systems      1,232.5       14.5   1,163.3        14.7         6.0
Oracle             739.4        8.7     529.8         6.7        39.6
Microsoft          397.1        4.7     350.3         4.4        13.4
Tibco              314.4        3.7     289.9         3.7         8.5
Other Vendors    2,657.3       31.3   2,643.0        33.3         0.5
Total            8,500.2      100.0   7,936.1       100.0         7.1
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Source: Gartner Dataquest (May 2006)

Gartner Dataquest's Software research group has traditionally measured market share in terms of new license revenue. However, because of the emergence and increasing popularity of open-source software and buyer consumption models such as hosted and subscription offerings, Gartner has moved to measure market share in terms of total software revenue, which includes revenue generated from new license, updates, subscriptions and hosting, technical support and maintenance. Professional services and hardware revenue are not included in total software revenue.

In 2005, the United States represented more than 41 percent of AIM spending, followed by Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) with 35 percent of the market. Within EMEA, Western Europe accounted for 31 percent of the market. However, emerging markets, such as Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa, are significantly outpacing Western Europe in terms of growth. Japan and Asia/Pacific represented more than 18 percent of the market in 2005. In 2006, the worldwide AIM market is expected to grow at similar rates as the outlook for the market remains challenging amid intense competition from the large software and systems vendors.

"Organizations are faced with spinning forces, such as the constant influx of new systems, immovable legacy and internal politics that end up increasing the complexity of IT systems. While integration can simplify complexity to make the IT environment accessible to more users and usable in more contexts, budgets for "reducing complexity" have been difficult to obtain," said Ms. Correia.

"Even when the budget holders have been convinced of the need for simplification, it still remains hard to obtain the right budget," Ms. Correia said. "We are seeing a paradoxical situation. Complexity of IT systems has risen, but historically this has not generated a spree of spending in application integration or new system software. However, we expect the software spending to continue to increase because corporations have started their movement of older systems to a service-oriented architecture based environment."

Additional information is available in the Gartner report "Market Share: AIM and Portal Software, Worldwide, 2005." The report provides market share results for the AIM market in seven worldwide regions. The report is available on the Gartner Web site at www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=492790.

Gartner analysts will provide more detailed analysis on the future of the AIM industry at the upcoming Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit 2006 taking place June 19-21 at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina in San Diego, California.