Worldwide system management software market to reach $15.4 billion in 2011

FRAMINGHAM, USA: International Data Corp. (IDC) has released the latest results from its Worldwide Semiannual System Management Software Tracker. The Tracker monitors more than 110 vendors globally in a total of 49 countries, providing biannual market size, vendor share, and forecast data for the six functional markets that comprise the system management software market in IDC's software taxonomy.

"The system management software market achieved double-digit growth during the first half of 2011; this was an improvement of almost 70 percent compared to the results from a year ago," said Wilvin Chee, associate VP, Worldwide Software Trackers. "The Change and Configuration Management (CCM) and Workload Scheduling and Automation (WSA) markets maintained the best growth among the functional, but the strongest gains were in the Event Management market, fueled significantly by the US, Japan, and CEMA region."

Among the six functional markets, three had revenues of more than $1 billion for the first half of 2011 (1H11). These were CCM, WSA, and Performance Management. All three markets experienced very strong growth in the US, while other regions such as Western Europe and CEMA also had good year-over-year growth. Canada and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) had somewhat lower growth in 1H11 compared to previous cycles, but maintained double-digit momentum. Japan and Latin America held steady growth in most markets.

"The first half 2011 results show continued healthy growth in worldwide system management software revenue," said Tim Grieser, program VP, Enterprise System Management Software. "Growth was fueled by increases in IT spending due to the continuing economic recovery and associated hardware refresh and upgrade cycles, and new investments in managing virtualized and cloud infrastructures. Automation to simplify and optimize IT operational costs was a key factor."

IBM, BMC, and HP held the top three spots in terms of revenue share in 1H11, though none were able to generate growth exceeding the market average. IBM and BMC had solid growth in the WSA market while HP achieved its best gains in CCM and Problem Management markets. Meanwhile, a number of vendors, including Microsoft, Hitachi, NEC, VMWare, Symantec, and Dell, enjoyed above market average growth in 1H11.

Microsoft, NEC, and VMware performed well in all the system management software markets where they compete. IDC also observed that a total of 14 vendors achieved worldwide revenues of more than $100 million in 1H11. That was one more than a year ago; the newcomer being Citrix, which had strong growth, particularly in CCM, its primary market.