Worldwide AIM software market up 2.8 percent in 2009

Fabrizio Biscotti, research director at Gartner said that the poor state of the economy played a major role in shaping the overall performance of the market. He stated: "Budget cuts forced a reduction in spending with consequent downsizing, delay or cancellation of software projects, which started in the first quarter of 2009 with a de facto spending freeze. This has hit vendors' revenues, and in fact 2009, as far as growth rates are concerned, was the worst year ever for AIM spending. "The increasing adoption of open source has hit commercial revenues. Nevertheless, on the back of strong drivers, such as service oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM) adoption and buoyant demand for application integration, the overall AIM market has remained positive, unlike most software segments, where revenues generally declined." According to Gartner, while 2008 saw a major shakeout in the market following some key acquisitions, 2009 was quieter in regard to mergers and acquisitions as vendors capitalised on their previous acquisition moves. As soon as recovery occurs, Gartner expects growth to be solid for AIM technology, because pent up demand has grown over time. Gartner reveals that the top five vendors accounted for approximately 58% of the AIM market in 2009, up from 52% in 2008. IBM maintained its leading position and accounted for 31% of total AIM software revenue in 2009. The analyst's report also shows that among the other largest players, some significant shifts occurred with Oracle being one of the fastest growing vendors, becoming the market share leader in application servers and narrowing the gap in enterprise service bus suites, followed by Microsoft and Software AG, which both gained market share in 2009.