What are the drivers fuelling uptake of AIM software in the local market?

According to Gartner, the AIM software market revenue totalled US$14.1 billion in 2007, a 12.9 percent increase from 2006 revenue of $12.5 billion. The market was primarily driven by strong growth in emerging market segments, such as enterprise service buses (ESBs) and business process management suites (BPMS).

The AIM market can be primarily characterised by three overall market forces. The market is demonstrating resilience with several mature segments still evolving and growing.

In addition, vendors are shifting their traditional application infrastructure and middleware products mix toward ESBs and BPMS in response to the strong demand for products that support Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and process-centric applications. Thirdly, the globalisation and internationalisation of companies are driving B2B integration requirements
and sophistication.

“Furthermore, the AIM segment in 2007 grew above the average growth rate of the overall enterprise software market, demonstrating that this technology area had not seen any noticeable signs of slowdown,” said Fabrizio Biscotti, research director at Gartner.

In 2007, the top five vendors held more than 50 percent of the overall AIM market, with IBM maintaining its leading position and accounting for 28.9 percent of the total software revenue.

“This year is set to be the most challenging for IBM in the middleware segment following the acquisition of BEA by Oracle which consolidated the second and third position in the AIM software market,” added Biscotti.