IBM Leadership Uncertain In Shifting Middleware Market

In the overall market, across operating systems, the leading vendors were IBM, BEA Systems and Oracle, which had market shares of 37 percent, 12 percent and 7 percent, respectively, International Data Corp. said. Last year, the market grew 6.4 percent to nearly $7 billion, and was expected to continue rising at a compound annual growth rate of 4.7 percent through 2009.

Application-deployment software, as defined by IDC, includes application, web and integration servers; message-oriented and transaction-server middleware; and all associated adapters, connectors and gateways. The analyst firm follows about 100 vendors in the space.

IBM rules the roost because of the large number of corporations running its CICS transaction server and MQSeries message-oriented middleware. However, 23 percent of IBM's market share last year was on the mainframe and OS/400 operating systems, both owned by IBM. Take away those OSes, and Big Blue's share is closer to No. 2 BEA.

"If companies use anything other than a mainframe or OS/400, it's an open field," IDC analyst Dennis Byron said.

At the same time, the market drivers are shifting toward software that can be used by business mangers rather than only IT professionals, Byron said. Such business process automation software sits on top of application-deployment software, making it possible for operations people to adapt computer systems to changing business dynamics.

"If you suddenly start selling Fords instead of Chevys, then right now you have to turn the whole place upside down," Byron said. "In the future, you'll be able to use business-process automation software to make the changes (in computer systems)."

BPA is expected to be particularly helpful in supply chains, which have numerous, complex business processes among multiple vendors.

Today, neither IBM nor any other vendor rules in business process automation, Byron said.

"No vendor today is in better position than the others," he said.

Another factor to watch is the expected growth in open-source software, which is a large player in the web- and application-server markets. Nevertheless, IDC does not expect it to change the dynamics of the market, since it will be the same vendors supplying the software.