Taxonomy
IDC's Worldwide Software Taxonomy, 2016
Henry D. Morris
IDC'S WORLDWIDE SOFTWARE TAXONOMY
FIGURE 1
Software Primary Market Segments
Source: IDC, 2016
July 2016, IDC #US41572216
TABLE OF CONTENTS
P.
IDC's Worldwide Software Taxonomy
1
Software Taxonomy Changes for 2016
1
Taxonomy Overview
2
Hierarchical Mapping: Software Primary/Secondary Markets
5
What Is Commercial Software?
5
General Functional Market Definitions
7
Definitions
10
Applications Market Definitions
10
Collaborative Applications
Conferencing Applications
Web Conferencing Applications
11
11
12
Email Applications
12
Enterprise Social Networks
12
Team Collaborative Applications
13
File Synchronization and Sharing Software
13
Content Applications
14
Content Management
14
Authoring and Publishing Software
16
Cognitive/AI Systems and Content Analytics Software
16
eDiscovery
17
Enterprise Portals
18
Enterprise Resource Management Applications
Financial Applications
18
18
Financial and Accounting
18
Treasury and Risk Management
19
Human Capital Management
19
Core HR
19
Recruiting
20
Compensation Management
20
Workforce Performance Management
21
Learning Management
22
Workforce Management
22
Payroll Accounting
23
Procurement
23
Order Management
24
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TABLE OF CONTENTS — Continued
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Enterprise Performance Management Applications
24
Project and Portfolio Management
25
Enterprise Asset Management
26
Supply Chain Management Applications
26
Logistics
26
Production Planning
27
Inventory Management
27
Operations and Manufacturing Applications
27
Services Operations Management
27
Manufacturing
28
Other Back Office
28
Engineering Applications
28
Mechanical Computer-Aided Design
29
Mechanical Computer-Aided Engineering
29
Mechanical Computer-Aided Manufacturing
29
Collaborative Product Data Management
29
Other Engineering
29
Customer Relationship Management Applications
30
Sales
30
Marketing
31
Customer Service
32
Contact Center
33
Application Development and Deployment Market Definitions
Structured Data Management Software
33
33
Relational Database Management Systems
34
Nonrelational Database Management Systems
34
End-User Database Management Systems
35
Navigational Database Management Systems
35
Object-Oriented Database Management Systems
35
Multivalue Database Management Systems
35
Representative NDBMS Products by Type
36
Dynamic Data Management Systems
36
Document-Oriented Database Systems
37
Key-Accessible Database Systems
37
Graph Database Management Systems
37
Scalable Data Collection Managers
37
Representative DDMS Products by Type
38
Database Development and Management Tools
39
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Database Administration Tools
39
Database Replication Software
39
Data Modeling Tools
39
Database Archiving and ILM Software
39
Database Development and Optimization Software
40
Database Security Software
40
Dynamic Data Grid Managers
40
Data Integration and Integrity Software
41
Bulk Data Movement Software
42
Dynamic Data Movement Software
42
Data Quality Software
43
Data Access Infrastructure
43
Composite Data Framework
43
Master Data Definition and Control Software
44
Metadata Management Software
45
Self-Service Data Preparation Software
45
Application Development Software
46
Development Languages, Environments, and Tools
46
Software Construction Components
48
Business Rules Management Systems
48
Modeling and Architecture Tools
48
Object Modeling Tools
48
Business Process Modeling Tools
49
Enterprise Architecture Tools
49
Quality and Life-Cycle Tools
49
Automated Software Quality Tools
49
Software Change, Configuration, and Process Management
50
Application Platforms
50
Deployment-Centric Application Platforms
51
Application Server Software Platforms
51
Deployment-Centric Application Platform as a Service
52
Mobile Back End as a Service
52
Model-Driven Application Platforms
52
Data-Centric Application Platforms
52
Process-Centric Application Platforms
53
Transaction Processing Monitors
54
Integration and Orchestration Middleware
54
Business-to-Business Middleware
55
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TABLE OF CONTENTS — Continued
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B2B Gateway Middleware
55
B2B Networks and B2B Managed Services
55
Integration Middleware
56
API Management Software
56
Enterprise Service Bus Middleware
56
Connectivity Middleware
57
Event-Driven Middleware
57
Business Activity Monitoring
57
Complex Event Processing Middleware
58
Message-Oriented Middleware
58
Managed File Transfer Software
59
Data Access, Analysis, and Delivery Software
59
End-User Query, Reporting, and Analysis
60
Advanced and Predictive Analytics Software
60
Spatial Information Management Software
61
System Infrastructure Software Market Definitions
61
System Management Software
61
IT Event and Log Management Tools
61
Workload Scheduling and Automation Software
62
Workload Management
62
Datacenter Operations Automation
62
Output Management Tools
63
Device Management
63
Print Management
63
Enterprise Output Management
64
Performance Management Software
64
Change and Configuration Management Software
65
Problem Management Software
65
Network Software
Network Infrastructure Software
65
66
Network Application Delivery Software
66
Network Virtualization and SDN Controller Software
67
Network Management Software
Security Software
67
68
Identity and Access Management
68
Endpoint Security
69
Messaging Security
69
Network Security
69
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Web Security
70
Security and Vulnerability Management Software
70
Other Security Software
70
Storage Software
Data Protection and Recovery Software
71
71
Data Protection Software
71
Virtual Tape Library Software
72
Backup and Recovery Reporting Software
72
Storage Replication Software
72
Host or Hypervisor-Based Replication Software
72
System and Data Migration Software
73
Fabric- and Appliance-Based Replication Software
73
Array-Based Replication Software
73
Replication Management Software
73
Archiving Software
73
Email Archiving Software
74
File and Other Archiving Software
74
Storage and Device Management Software
74
SRM and Heterogeneous SAN Management Software
74
SRM and SAN Management Software for Homogeneous Environments
74
Storage Device Management Software
75
Other Storage Management Software
75
Storage Infrastructure Software
75
Storage Virtualization and Federation Software
75
Host-Based File Systems and Volume Management Software
76
Access and Path Management Software
76
Automated Storage Tiering Software
76
Storage Acceleration Software
76
Software-Defined Storage Controller Software
77
Block-Based Software-Defined Storage Controller Software
78
File-Based Software-Defined Storage Controller Software
78
Object-Based Software-Defined Storage Controller Software
79
Hyperconverged Software–Defined Storage Controller Software
79
System Software
79
Operating Systems and Subsystems
80
Availability and Clustering Software
80
Virtual Client Computing
81
Software-Defined Compute Software
81
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Virtual Machine Software
81
Container Engine Software
82
Cloud System Software
82
Other System Software
83
Geographic Area Definitions
83
Operating Environment Definitions
83
Related Markets
86
Formal Competitive Markets Tracked
86
Not Necessarily Mutually Exclusive
89
Applications-Based Competitive Markets
89
Business Analytics Software
89
Communities
90
Content Collaboration
91
Enterprise Cloud Content Collaboration
91
Customer Communications Management
92
xRP Applications Suites
92
IT PPM
93
IT PPM SaaS
94
Mobile Enterprise Applications
94
Product Life-Cycle Management Applications
95
Services Resource Planning Applications
96
Digital Commerce Applications
97
Business Commerce Networks
98
Electronic Design Automation
99
Application Development and Deployment Software Competitive Markets
Platform as a Service
99
99
Cloud Application Platforms
100
Cloud Integration Services
102
Cloud Data Services
103
Cloud Application Development and Life-Cycle Services
104
Other Cloud Platform Services
105
Business Process Management Software
106
Cloud Testing/ASQ PaaS
107
Embedded Database Management Systems
108
DevOps
108
Agile Application Life-Cycle Management Software
109
IoT Analytics and Information Management
109
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TABLE OF CONTENTS — Continued
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Master Data Management
110
Mobile Testing
111
Requirements Visualization, Definition, and Management
112
Software Quality Analysis and Measurement
112
Mobile Enterprise Application Development Platforms
113
IT Asset Management Software
114
Enterprise Mobility Management Software
114
Mobile Enterprise Security Software
115
Software Distribution
116
Learn More
117
Related Research
117
Appendix: IDC's Software Market Forecast and Analysis Methodology
117
Company Revenue Modeling
118
Revenue Recognition
118
Immediate Recognition
118
Deferred Recognition
119
Subscription Revenue
119
Mergers and Acquisitions: "Backstreaming"
119
Calendar Versus Fiscal Years
119
Treatment of Exchange Rates
119
Allocating Revenue to Geographic Regions
121
Allocating Revenue to Operating Environments
121
Historical Data Reporting
121
Determination of "Other"
122
"When a Product Becomes a Feature"
122
Forecast Methodology
122
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LIST OF TABLES
P.
1
Summary of Software Functional Market Changes for 2016
1
2
Commercial Software Functional Taxonomy, 2016: Applications by Secondary Market 8
3
Commercial Software Functional Taxonomy, 2016: Application Development and
Deployment Software by Secondary Market
9
4
Commercial Software Functional Taxonomy, 2016: System Infrastructure Software by
Secondary Market
10
5
IDC's Software Competitive Markets, 2016
87
6
Mapping of Functional Markets to PaaS Submarkets
105
7
Difference Between Current and Constant Currency View: Historical Vendor Revenue 120
8
Difference Between Current and Constant Currency View: Forecast Market Sizing
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LIST OF FIGURES
P.
2
Commercial Software Revenue Data Model
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SOFTWARE TAXONOMY CHANGES FOR 2016
IDC's software functional market taxonomy is updated annually to reflect the dynamic nature of the
software marketplace. Table 1 summarizes the taxonomy changes that have been incorporated. For
reference, the previous version of the software taxonomy is documented in IDC's Software Taxonomy,
2015 (IDC #256767, June 2015). Note that in addition to the structural changes noted in this table,
some definitions were updated to reflect the evolution of specific market categories.
TABLE 1
Summary of Software Functional Market Changes for 2016
Applications
Application
development and
deployment
System
infrastructure
software
©2016 IDC
2015 Market
2016 Market
Comments
Financial performance
and strategy
management
Enterprise
performance
management
Renamed
Cognitive systems,
content analytics, and
discovery software
Cognitive/artificial
intelligence (AI)
systems and content
analytics software
Renamed reflecting increased market use of
"AI" along with "cognitive" for this type of
software
Data integration and
access software
Data integration and
integrity software
Renamed and expanded the scope of this
market (Self-service data preparation is added
as a submarket. The overall market name was
changed [to data integration and integrity] to
emphasize the growing importance of data
quality.)
Distributed cache
managers
Dynamic data grid
managers
Renamed
Nonrelational
database
management system
(DBMS)
Dynamic data
management
systems, nonrelational
DBMS
Split the market with the newly defined dynamic
data management systems including semischematic and non-schematic databases (such
as Hadoop)
Database
development and
management tools
Database
development and
management tools
Moved the data modeling tools submarket from
the modeling and architecture tools functional
market to the database development and
management tools functional market
Network infrastructure
software
Network infrastructure
software
Clarified scope (This market includes the
following submarkets: network application
delivery, software-defined networks [SDNs], and
telecom equipment provider NIS. Last year, IDC
reported on only the first of these submarkets.
This year, IDC adds reporting on the second
submarket — software-defined networks.)
Event management
tools
IT event and log
management tools
Renamed
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TABLE 1
Summary of Software Functional Market Changes for 2016
2015 Market
2016 Market
Comments
Virtual machine and
cloud system software
Software-defined
compute software
Renamed and expanded the scope, adding a
submarket for container engine software
Output management
tools
Output management
tools
Expanded the definition, adding submarkets for
print and device management in addition to
enterprise output management
Source: IDC, 2016
TAXONOMY OVERVIEW
This IDC study provides a detailed description of IDC's software market taxonomy. For 2016, the
taxonomy includes 81 individual functional markets grouped within three primary segments:
applications, application development and deployment (AD&D), and system infrastructure software
(SIS).
In addition, IDC defines a wide range of "competitive" markets. Competitive markets are combinations
of the whole or fractions of functional markets that reflect such market dynamics as the problem being
solved or the technology on which the software is based.
IDC's software research programs maintain a centralized database that includes worldwide total
commercial software revenue for over 1,000 software vendors. We do not contend that this is an
exhaustive list of software providers; in fact, we believe there are more than 10,000 such suppliers.
However, our database is designed to support very precise forecasting, and the suppliers in the
database represent a majority of the software market's revenue overall and a majority of the revenue in
each of the various segmentations it supports. The revenue is allocated to functional market segments,
geographic areas, revenue types, industries, channels, and operating environments. The functional
software markets defined by the taxonomy represent a collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive
view of the worldwide software marketplace.
IDC's software market taxonomy is the basis for the relational multidimensional schema of IDC's
Software Research database. The information from this continually updated database is used by IDC's
software Continuous Intelligence Services (CISs) (i.e., our subscription research services) to generate
consistent commercial software market sizing and forecasts. In addition, IDC's Software Research
database is used as an input to worldwide and regional syndicated trackers and as the foundation for
consulting engagements and further segmentations.
Under the IDC software taxonomy, our data pertains to what we call total commercial software
revenue. This revenue is broken into three types: license revenue, maintenance revenue, and
subscription and other revenue. The definitions are:
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
License revenue includes revenue collected for software licenses, either limited term (lease) or
perpetual, that include licenses for new installations of a software product, licenses for
additional software options, and changes to existing licenses, permitting more users or more
computer system resources to be used by the licensed software (based, of course, on the
original license agreement); such changes are often necessitated by server upgrades or staff
increases or conversions of licenses that result in incremental additional revenue such as
conversions from a fixed number of users or processors to a site or enterprise license. License
revenue does not include license maintenance revenue, which typically includes fees covering
version upgrades, the automatic delivery of bug fixes and patches, and basic telephone
support, all of which are normally delivered during a fixed, renewable term of service.

Maintenance revenue consists of fees charged for continuous improvement of licensed
software by repairing known faults and errors and/or enhancing and updating the product, as
well as for basic technical support of the licensed software, all of which are normally delivered
during a fixed, renewable term of service. Maintenance revenue does not include license
revenue nor subscription revenue of any kind, whether for on-premise software or software
deployed in the cloud.

Subscription and other revenue consists of fees to use software products or software-based
services and receive maintenance and support for those software products/services for a
limited period of time. It can be subcategorized into three types:

Public cloud software service is based on a service composition and delivery model made
up of a utility computing environment in which unrelated customers share a common
software managed and hosted by ISVs or hosted in the cloud. Here, the software code or
intellectual property (IP) is owned by the ISVs. This subscription provides customers with
access to and consumption of software functionality built specifically for network delivery
and provisioned and accessed by users over the Internet. Importantly, the subscription
model must fit IDC-defined attributes of cloud services, which includes running on a
multitenancy architecture. Offerings are categorized as "cloud services" (or not) by looking
strictly at the code layer that defines the offering's functional market categorization. For
example, for a " customer relationship management (CRM)" offering, the assessment is
whether the CRM functional layer meets the cloud services definition, not the underlying
middleware or infrastructure. For example, consider a case where salesforce.com offers
CRM as a service but uses single-tenant Oracle relational database management systems
(RDBMSs) on the back end for data management. As its CRM offering is multitenant
based, it will be classified as a public cloud subscription.

Dedicated managed service is also utility computing based where customers access
software functionality that is managed and hosted by ISVs owning the software IP.
Although the usage is priced per an on-demand basis, this model is not considered as a
cloud service because it is a service dedicated to a single customer (i.e., instances are not
shared among unrelated customers). An example is SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC).
Here, SAP is providing a managed service for hosting and managing its HANA software
on behalf of a specific client (dedicated). IDC classifies the fee for the software use and for
the management/hosting as software revenue of this "dedicated managed service" type.
When the same software IP owner provides access to and hosting/management of
software, it is not always possible to split the fees into software use versus
hosting/management in this dedicated instance, just as we do not attempt to split the
software use versus hosting management fees in the case of software-as-a-service
(SaaS) or platform-as-a-service (PaaS) public cloud services. Taking this example further,
SAP also has an arrangement with partners such as IBM SoftLayer and Fujitsu where they
can host or manage SAP HEC services. The fee for the use of the software is counted as
software revenue for SAP, the IP owner. But the fee for the hosting/management by the
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service provider is not counted as software revenue. It is covered under IDC's services
taxonomy as a managed service if the hosting service is dedicated to each customer or
under IDC's public cloud services taxonomy if the hosting service is shared and meets
IDC's other attributes of a public cloud service.

Other subscription is associated with software deployed on-premise only where it is leased
or rented (often, but not exclusively, applied to mainframe software) or is associated with
software that was built using open source code (e.g., Red Hat Enterprise Linux). In the
latter case, the subscription fee provides ongoing updates, support, and commercial
support for the customers but, in many cases, is not a prerequisite for using the code in an
unsupported fashion. Some open source subscriptions explicitly require that customers
cease using a branded software product if the subscription fee should lapse. The
subscription fee is a bundled package where the fair value of the license fee is not
separately determinable from the maintenance/support portion.

Other revenue includes revenue from other forms of software fees such as per-transaction
fees for the usage of software owned by the vendor. For example, Descartes Systems
Group's logistics and supply chain management solutions are charged on a transactional
basis as one option in addition to subscription and perpetual license options.
In our data process, we also break down the total commercial software revenue into different levels of
software markets, geographical areas, and operating environments. Figure 2 shows how the total
commercial software revenue relates back to total company revenue.
FIGURE 2
Commercial Software Revenue Data Model
Source: IDC, 2016
In addition, this study defines a wide range of competitive markets. Competitive markets are
combinations of the whole or fractions of functional markets that reflect such market dynamics as the
problem being solved or the technology on which the software is based.
Competitive markets are typically more ad hoc because they are meant to reflect current market
approaches, coalitions, standards, and software architectures. Some competitive markets have been
modeled to address a broad solution market category. Others, for example, define a market view
particular to an architecture or represent revenue in subsets of geographic regions.
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HIERARCHICAL MAPPING: SOFTWARE PRIMARY/SECONDARY MARKETS
What Is Commercial Software?
How does IDC identify the companies it measures and the resulting value of the markets? Our
objective is to define companies and markets that are relevant for market research purposes — not for
legal or accounting purposes nor simply for publishing historical lists. Clearly, many companies have
software and other types of business units; this taxonomy is not about deciding on the relative
strengths of these business units and applying a single label to the entire company.
The question therefore is: When does a company market and deploy software that should be counted
as such for market research purposes?
IDC uses the term commercial software to distinguish commercially available software from custom
software. Commercial software is programs or codesets of any type commercially available through
sale, lease, or rental, or as a service. Commercial software revenue typically includes fees for initial
and continued right-to-use commercial software licenses. These fees may include, as part of the
license contract, access to product support and/or other services that are inseparable from the right-touse license fee structure, or this support may be priced separately. Upgrades may be included in the
continuing right of use or may be priced separately. All of the aforementioned revenue structures are
counted by IDC as commercial software revenue.
Commercial software revenue excludes service revenue derived from training, consulting, and
systems integration that is separate (or unbundled) from the right-to-use license but does include the
implicit value of software included in a service that offers software functionality by a different pricing
scheme (as described in the following paragraph in more detail).
Increasingly, commercial software is also being marketed and deployed on a subscription and
transaction basis, as well as via other arrangements (e.g., for "free" with the commercial software's
"owner" taking a percentage of the revenue enabled by the software as implicit "product" revenue),
some of which do not involve a license. Software has also long been available for lease or rent,
typically on mainframes. Furthermore, we must not be limited by accounting directives (such as those
released by AICPA and FASB) because this would neglect to count large segments of software
markets in a way that accurately reflects market dynamics and future opportunity.
The definition of commercial software is subject to interpretation, and the application and usage of
software continues to grow as the number and types of devices that run software expand. The markets
defined in this document are intended to capture enterprise software that is deployed on computational
servers and clients. The following paragraph explains the meaning, for the purposes of this software
taxonomy, of "enterprise" and deployed on "computational servers and clients."
What is an enterprise? Enterprises are businesses, governments, and nonprofit entities of all sizes
ranging from entrepreneurs running a very small business to very large multinational corporations
employing thousands. Enterprises need to comply with local and country-specific taxes and business
regulations when running their business. The emergence and growing importance of the "sharing
economy" has complicated and expanded what has typically been described as an enterprise. For
example, Airbnb hosts are required to pay the same hotel taxes as large corporate hotel chains. The
following bullet points show the range of enterprises covered here. Selective software markets may
use enterprise-size measures up to the level of detail shown here:

Home-based businesses/self-employed/sharing economy (0 employees)
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
Microbusinesses (1–9 employees)

Very small businesses (10–49 employees)

Small businesses (50–99 employees)

Small to medium-sized businesses (100–499 employees)

Medium-sized businesses (500–999 employees)

Medium-sized to large businesses (1,000–4,999 employees)

Large businesses (5,000–9,999 employees)

Very large businesses (10,000+ employees)
What are the implications of the restriction to being deployed on "computational servers and clients"?
We recognize that there is value that vendors are providing their customers through software deployed
on dedicated gaming consoles, networking equipment, and chips embedded within automobiles, to
name a few examples, but these examples go beyond the scope of this taxonomy. The monetary value
associated with these types of software is excluded from our software vendor shares and market
forecasts.
IDC's Software Research database includes revenue from a company if the company competes in a
commercial software market defined in the taxonomy. From the market research standpoint, this is the
most important question. Software revenue is defined in terms of two types of offerings from the
viewpoint of the customer:

The market for software code of a given functionality sold as such, typically via a perpetual
license

The market for software code bundled and marketed in another way (e.g., as a service) that
competes with perpetually licensed software products
To be classified as commercial software revenue attributed to a company in IDC's Software Research
database, both of the following have to be true:

Ownership of intellectual property. Resellers and distributors of software and X-as-a-service
(XaaS) providers that do not own the software code are not software vendors but channels for
software vendors. Some vendors own the code and also provide an XaaS offering. In this
case, IDC estimates a value for the software provided in that manner. However, in the case of
open source software (OSS) (where there is no "owner" of the intellectual property), revenue is
attributed to the distributor that may be a software vendor or, increasingly today, a device
maker.
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
Replicated product. Software companies assemble a package of code from components and
"sell" multiple copies in a one-to-many business model. The software product is replicated to
support that model. Even though it may be customized as it is being installed, when the
customization capability is an attribute built into the code, it is still considered replicated.
Value-added resellers (VARs) do customization to commercial software, often on a one-to-one
basis. In this case, VARs are a channel for the software. When a company takes code and
adds its own changes and sells the resulting package substantially as changed to many
customers, it is — in turn — an ISV that resells or OEMs components and adds value. (In these
cases, IDC estimates the pass-through revenue and deducts it from the reseller and attributes
it to the original owner of the intellectual property, so as not to double count revenue and
artificially inflate the size of the software market.)
See Appendix: IDC's Software Market Forecast and Analysis Methodology for an overview of the
methodology employed by IDC's software analysts for collecting, analyzing, and reporting revenue
data for the categories defined by the software taxonomy.
General Functional Market Definitions

The worldwide software market includes all commercial software revenue across all functional
markets or market aggregations.

Primary software markets are the aggregation of the functional markets for applications,
application development and deployment, and system infrastructure. The three primary
markets together make up the worldwide software market.

Secondary software markets are 18 important aggregations that make up IDC's commercial
software market taxonomy. These secondary markets are collaborative applications; content
applications; enterprise resource management (ERM) applications; supply chain management
(SCM) applications; operations and manufacturing applications; engineering applications;
customer relationship management (CRM) applications; structured data management
software; application development software; quality and life-cycle tools; application platforms;
integration and orchestration middleware; data access, analysis, and delivery software;
system management software; network software; security software; storage software; and
system software. These markets map into the three primary markets and collectively equate to
the worldwide software market.

Functional markets are the focal point of IDC's analysis. IDC defines 81 individual functional
markets for which it analyzes revenue by vendor, geography and, in some instances,
additional segmentations. Functional markets also provide the foundation and revenue base
for the generation of competitive markets.

Submarkets describe one or more discrete functional areas within a specific market. Although
submarket-level data may be reported in selected IDC studies, this level of detail is not
recorded in IDC's Software Research database.
Tables 2–4 provide an overview of the functional markets and secondary markets that constitute the
applications, AD&D, and system infrastructure software market, respectively.
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TABLE 2
Commercial Software Functional Taxonomy, 2016: Applications by
Secondary Market
Collaborative
Applications
Content
Applications
Enterprise
Resource
Management
Applications
Conferencing
applications
Content
management
Financial
applications
Logistics
Services
operations
management
Mechanical
CAD
Sales
Email
applications
Authoring and
publishing
software
Human
capital
management
Production
planning
Manufacturing
Mechanical
CAE
Marketing
Enterprise
social networks
Cognitive/AI
systems and
content analytics
software
Payroll
accounting
Inventory
management
Other back
office
Mechanical
CAM
Customer
service
Team
collaborative
applications
eDiscovery
Procurement
Collaborative
product data
management
Contact
center
File
synchronization
and sharing
software
Enterprise portals
Order
management
Other
engineering
Supply Chain
Management
Applications
Operations
and
Manufacturing
Applications
Engineering
Applications
Customer
Relationship
Management
Applications
Enterprise
performance
management
applications
Project and
portfolio
management
(PPM)
Enterprise
asset
management
Source: IDC, 2016
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TABLE 3
Commercial Software Functional Taxonomy, 2016: Application Development
and Deployment Software by Secondary Market
Structured Data
Management
Software
Application
Development
Software
Relational database
management
systems (RDBMSs)
Integration and
Orchestration
Middleware
Data Access,
Analysis, and
Delivery Software
Deploymentcentric
application
platforms
Business-tobusiness
middleware
End-user query,
reporting, and
analysis
Model-driven
application
platforms
Integration
middleware
Advanced and
predictive
analytics
software
Transaction
processing
monitors
Event-driven
middleware
Spatial
information
management
software
Quality and LifeCycle Tools
Application
Platforms
Development
languages,
environments,
and tools
Automated
software quality
(ASQ)
Nonrelational
database
management
systems (NDBMSs)
Software
construction
components
Software change,
configuration, and
process
management
Dynamic data
management
systems
Business rules
management
systems
Database
development and
management tools
Modeling and
architecture
tools
Managed file
transfer software
Dynamic data grid
managers
Data integration and
integrity software
Source: IDC, 2016
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TABLE 4
Commercial Software Functional Taxonomy, 2016: System Infrastructure
Software by Secondary Market
System Management
Software
Network Software
Security Software
Storage Software
System Software
IT event and log
management tools
Network infrastructure
software
Identity and access
management
Data protection and
recovery software
Operating systems
and subsystems
Workload scheduling
and automation
software
Network management
software
Endpoint security
Storage replication
software
Availability and
clustering software
Output management
tools
Messaging security
Archiving software
Virtual client
computing
Performance
management software
Network security
Storage and device
management
software
Software-defined
compute software
Change and
configuration
management software
Web security
Storage
infrastructure
software
Other system
software
Problem management
software
Security and
vulnerability
management
software
Software-defined
storage controller
software
Other security
software
Source: IDC, 2016
DEFINITIONS
Applications Market Definitions
Commercial application software includes commercial, industrial, and technical programs and
codesets designed to automate specific sets of business processes in an industry or business function
and make groups or individuals in organizations more productive, or support education, or support
data processing in personal activity. The applications primary market includes the collaboration,
content, enterprise resource management, supply chain management, operations and manufacturing,
engineering, and CRM applications secondary markets.
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IDC has removed the "consumer applications" secondary market and the associated consumer
software functional market from IDC's commercial software database and the software taxonomy.
Given the trend in IT to consumerization in the enterprise, IDC has realigned all markets to include the
associated software used by consumers in those markets, thereby eliminating the need for a separate
consumer applications market. Certain portions of the consumer software market have been
reclassified into other existing functional software categories, while other portions have been
eliminated from our accounting.
Specifically, we have removed applications designed to deliver content and certain services wherein
utility and, therefore, value lie in the content or service being delivered and not in the underlying
software. Examples of revenue we used to include in the consumer software market that fall into the
content category include games from Activision Blizzard or Microsoft. Examples of other types of
content that we did not and will not count as software include popular mobile applications such as
Netflix, Hulu, Uber, OpenTable, and Fruit Ninja. End users would not pay for or otherwise value a
mobile app software "container" for Netflix or Angry Birds in the absence of the content or service
itself. Note that the tools used to develop, deliver, and manage these services have value as software
and are counted under application development and deployment software categories. Note also that
IDC's consumer research teams will continue to track and research gaming and entertainment apps no
longer accounted for in the software taxonomy.
Applications used by consumers that have been reclassified into other functional markets include
software where the value lies in the functionality of the software itself. Examples include any number of
popular content storage, accounting and finance, collaboration, publishing, and messaging and
communication applications. These applications typically are used in a "consumer" capacity and/or in a
workplace context.
In summary, we have concluded that a "consumer" distinction is an insufficiently descriptive or
accurate way to characterize the value associated with specific application categories, many of which
could be used in a "consumer" capacity or in a workplace context. We believe this reclassification
provides a clear, harmonized, and more accurate accounting of applications under IDC's software
taxonomy.
Collaborative Applications
Collaborative applications enable groups of people to work together by sharing information and
processes. Definitions of collaborative applications markets are presented in the sections that follow.
Conferencing Applications
Conferencing applications (aka Web, data, visual, electronic, or real-time conferencing) provide a realtime connection for the viewing, exchange, or creation of content and information by two or more users
in a scheduled or ad hoc online meeting or event. The functionality of conferencing applications
includes, but is not limited to, application and screen sharing including markup and annotation, instant
messaging (IM) and presence, livestreaming video, video and audioconferencing, polls and surveys,
and whiteboard capabilities also with markup or annotation. Conferencing applications can be
delivered to a desktop or smartphone device (using IP, TDM, Web interface, proprietary thin client, or
browser) as well as specific video endpoint (either a specialized video room or desktop). The following
are representative vendors and products in this market:

Adobe (Adobe Connect)

Avaya (Aura Conferencing — Web conferencing)
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
Cisco (WebEx)

Citrix (GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar)

Microsoft (Lync Server, Lync Online)
IDC has defined a submarket of the conferencing applications functional market: Web conferencing
applications.
Web Conferencing Applications
Web conferencing is a set of technologies and services that allow people to hold real-time and
synchronous conferences over the Internet. Web conference participants need to use a Web browser
and a PC or mobile device to share information and may also include "converged conferencing"
scenarios where Web, IP audio, and desktop video are part of the delivered experience. Web
conferencing capabilities include application and screen sharing including markup and annotation,
instant messaging and presence, livestreaming video, polls and surveys, whiteboard, and video and
audioconferencing (via PSTN/TDM networks or through VoIP). The following are representative
vendors and products in this submarket:

Cisco (WebEx)

Citrix (GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar)

Microsoft (Lync Online)
Email Applications
Email applications provide a framework for electronic messaging. The core integrated functionality can
consist of mail messaging, group calendaring and scheduling, shared folders/databases, and threaded
discussions. Email applications are based on shared directory messaging platforms where directory
integration, access protocols, message encryption and authentication, and custom domains are
available functionalities.
The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Google (Google for Work)

IBM (IBM Verse, IBM Notes, IBM Notes and Domino)

Microsoft (Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Outlook)
Enterprise Social Networks
Enterprise social networks (ESNs) enable social collaboration capabilities to users that are either
inside or outside an organization's firewall. Solution capabilities should include, but are not limited to,
activity streams, blogs, wikis, microblogging, discussion forums, groups (public or private), ideas,
profiles, recommendation engines (people, content, or objects), tagging, bookmarking, and online
communities. An ESN provides a social collaboration or relationship layer in a business that can be a
discrete standalone solution and/or a set of service-oriented application programming interfaces (APIs)
or integrated applications that coexist with other business and communications applications. Discrete
solutions may support one type of social functionality (such as online communities, ideation, or
innovation management) or a broad-based platform that encompasses many functionality traits.
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The following are representative vendors and products in the enterprise social networks market:

IBM (IBM Connections)

Jive Software (Jive-n and Jive-x)

Microsoft (Yammer)

salesforce.com (Chatter)

Lithium Technologies (Online Communities)

Sprinklr (Get Satisfaction)
For those applications supporting particular customer-facing social capabilities including social media,
monitoring, and management, refer to the customer relationship management definition in this
taxonomy.
Team Collaborative Applications
Team collaborative applications (TCAs) provide a workspace and an integrated set of Web-based
tools for ad hoc, unstructured, document-centric collaboration between groups or individuals between
known domains. A TCA can be represented by secure "rooms" that contain documents, chat history,
and transaction history in order to maintain a persistent auditable history or a more multipurpose
shared workspace where users are able to store, access, and share files. Administration is primarily
performed by a known user (that governs access rules), but IT administration controls/management
may also be possible. TCA solutions may also allow directory integration, policy management, and
integration with social collaboration tools (content shared within the social context of newsfeeds or
groups). Communication within the TCA environment is mostly asynchronous, business to business
(B2B), and closed to a specific set of eyes. The following are representative vendors and products in
this market:

Intralinks (Dealspace, Fundspace, Debtspace)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (a portion of this compound product)

Huddle
Team collaborative applications designed for a particular vertical market such as manufacturing
product design or life-cycle development (product data management [PDM] and product life-cycle
management [PLM]) or application development code sharing are not included here.
File Synchronization and Sharing Software
Sync and share software are applications that enable users to store file-based content to synchronize
files across designated devices and share folders and files with designated people and systems.
These applications are typically offered as services and include products that are deployed in a public
cloud, in a private datacenter, or as a private-public hybrid. Sync and share software provides a simple
method for the content owner or administrator to grant access rights and privileges to other people and
systems. Common privileges range from co-owning folders and files to editing, reviewing, viewing,
downloading, and uploading.
The following criteria are required to be met by solutions in order to be included in this category:

Access to files across heterogeneous devices. Sync and share services provide access to
content via a browser, as a mobile app across heterogeneous mobile platforms, and through
the Windows Explorer and Macintosh Finder file systems.
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
Team sharing. The services enable users to invite other users to share access to files and
folders. Users can also publish links to specific files or folders.

Storage management. File sync and share applications manage storage and orchestration of
files, folders, and permissions to ensure access to the up-to-date version and a version
history.

Security. All sync and share services have the ability to restrict unauthorized users and
systems from accessing files managed by the service.

Administration. Administrators can establish privileges and access rights across groups, run
reports that keep track of files stored in the service, determine who is accessing content, view
download statistics, and set storage quota limits per group, team, or individual.

Ease of use. The service is easy to set up and use by an end user (non-IT professional).
Although IT may be involved in large enterprise deployments and may have an administrator
involved in establishing some of the structured file folders, day-to-day use does not require
training or IT involvement with end-user implementation.

Separable offering. Services are identified as providing file sync and share as their primary
function and are separately priced or packaged, as opposed to being a feature of a product
whose primary function (such as content management, collaboration, or backup) is not file
sync and share.
The following are representative vendors in this market:

Accellion

Box (Box)

Citrix (ShareFile)

Dropbox (Dropbox Business)

Egnyte

EMC (Syncplicity)

Google (Google Drive)

Hightail (Workstream)

Microsoft (OneDrive)

SugarSync
Content Applications
Content applications include content management software; authoring and publishing software;
cognitive/AI systems, content analytics, and discovery software; eDiscovery software; and enterprise
portals. The specific market definitions are presented in the sections that follow.
Content Management
Content management software builds, organizes, manages, and stores collections of digital works in
any medium or format. The software in this market includes document management, Web content
management, capture and image management, digital asset management, and records management.
(Additional submarkets include component content management for technical content management
and content marketing solutions that support content planning, curation, acquisition, and delivery.)
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Content management systems that manage enterprise documents and records provide a foundation
for knowledge management and compliance; and case management solutions or frameworks that
combine content management with business process management and analytics form the foundation
for content-enabled applications that automate document-centric business processes. Web content
management systems (and, increasingly, digital asset management systems) form the core of the
modern digital experience delivery platform.
Over the past few years, solutions have emerged that blur the lines between content management,
team collaborative applications, and enterprise portals. More recently, file sync and sharing services
have begun to offer basic content management capabilities such as versioning, check-in/check-out or
locking for edit, policy management, and APIs. Conversely, content management vendors have
extended their solutions with collaboration features such as file sync and share, social capabilities
(threaded discussions, commenting, voting, and so forth related to the content), and team workspaces
— whether on-premise, in the cloud, or in hybrid deployments — further blurring these lines.
Applications in this market include one or more of the following functions:

Gathering and feeding documents and other media into collections via crawlers or other
automated and/or manual means and performing metadata capture/enrichment,
classification/categorization, data extraction, formatting, transformations, and/or conversion
operations

Organizing and maintaining information, including some or all of the following:

Indexing, cataloging, and/or categorizing information

Building directories and defining content objects, folders, hierarchies, and other entities
and maintaining metadata associated with these

Record keeping, auditing, and logging

Updating and purging content

Searching for information in the content management system (embedded tools may be
provided)

Configuring/designing the user experience, whether for internally focused content-based
applications or Web experiences (In addition to user interface design capabilities, solutions
may include templated publishing, content syndication, and capabilities for rendition
management, personalization, content matching, and other types of content optimization.)

Ensuring document security by managing rights and permissions to create, edit, post, or delete
materials; managing user access; and protecting intellectual property

Integrating with enterprise applications, digital marketing tools, and other systems via APIs,
connectors, and other mechanisms to support enterprise business processes and digital
experience delivery
Representative vendors in the content management market segment include:

Document management, capture and image management, records management, and cloud
content management: Alfresco, EMC, HP Inc., Hyland, IBM, Laserfiche, Lexmark, Microsoft,
OpenText, and Oracle

Web content management: Acquia, Adobe, Automattic, EPiServer, IBM, OpenText, Oracle,
SDL, Sitecore, and Wix

Digital asset management: Adobe, ADAM, Bynder, CELUM, North Plains Systems, OpenText,
and Widen
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Authoring and Publishing Software
Authoring and publishing software is defined as software used to create, author, edit, and publish
content, including text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images, audio, video, and XMLstructured documents. It does not include the software used to design and develop Web sites.
Authoring and publishing software includes the following categories:

Office suites/point products, including word processors, spreadsheets, presentation software,
and notetaking applications (e.g., Microsoft Office, Evernote, Google Docs, and Smartsheet)

Graphic design and layout, including image editing software and layout and design software
(e.g., Adobe's InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop and Quark's QuarkXPress)

Compound document authoring and publishing, including XML authoring software as well as
software for the automated and semiautomated generation of paginated, structured electronic
documents from content components (e.g., Adobe FrameMaker, EMC's Document Sciences
xPression, HP-Exstream's Dialogue, OpenText StreamServe, Oracle Documaker, PTC
Arbortext, and Quark)

Forms design and input software, including software to design forms, render the forms for
display, and enter data into the forms but not to route, manage, or process the forms beyond
form-level validation or actions (e.g., Adobe AEM Forms, Avoka, OpenText LiquidOffice, IBM
Forms, and Intelledox)

Survey software, which enables users to easily design, field, and analyze Web surveys without
programming (e.g., SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics)

eSignature solutions, which manage signing/approvals workflows and may provide vaulting or
other custodial services (e.g., Adobe Sign and DocuSign)

Audio/video (AV) authoring and postproduction software, which lets professionals and
advanced consumers edit, manipulate, and assemble audio and video content (e.g., Adobe's
Premiere, After Effects, and Audition; Apple Final Cut Pro; Autodesk Max and Maya; and Avid
Media Composer)

Information diagramming applications, which provide for the diagramming and visual
representation of information (e.g., Microsoft Visio and Mindjet MindManager)

Other authoring tools, including tools for creating elearning content, online help, and other
types of content (e.g., Adobe Captivate RoboHelp and MadCap Flare)

Online video platforms, which enable users to manage, publish, syndicate, monetize, analyze,
and deliver live and/or on-demand video content over the Internet (e.g., Adobe Primetime,
Brightcove, Comcast's thePlatform, Kaltura, Ooyala, and Vidyard)

Digital publishing solutions, which enable users to create digital publications for tablets,
smartphones, and other devices (e.g., Adobe Publish, Aquafadas, GTxcel Texterity, Nxtbook
Media, Quark App Studio, and ZMags)
Cognitive/AI Systems and Content Analytics Software
Cognitive/artificial intelligence (AI) systems and content analytics software analyzes, organizes,
accesses, and provides advisory services based on a range of unstructured information and provides a
platform for the development of analytic and cognitive applications. large amounts of structured and
unstructured data, content analytics, information discovery, and analysis as well as numerous other
infrastructure technologies, cognitive/AI systems use deep natural language processing and
understanding to answer questions, provide recommendations and direction, hypothesize and
formulate possible answers based on available evidence, be trained through the ingestion of vast
amounts of content, and automatically adapt and learn from its mistakes and failures. The technology
components in this market include software for text (often in multiple languages) and rich media (such
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as audio, video, and image) tagging, searching, entity and relationship extraction, information
discovery, machine learning, deep learning, supervised and unsupervised learning, hypotheses
generation, categorization, clustering, question answering, visualization, filtering, alerting, and
navigation.
This market is divided into three submarkets that handle different aspects of unstructured information
analysis and processing. These sub-markets are:

Cognitive software platforms: These platforms are used to build smart applications that learn
and improve over time using a wide range of information access processes combined with
deep learning and machine learning.

Search systems: This includes departmental, enterprise, and task-based search and discovery
systems as well as cloud-based and personal information access systems. This submarket
also includes unified information access tools and systems that combine text analytics,
clustering, categorization, and search into a comprehensive information access system.

Content analytics: Content analytics systems provide tools for recognizing, understanding, and
extracting value from text or by using similar technologies to generate human-readable text.
This also includes language analyzers and automated language translation as well as text
clustering and categorization tools. This submarket also includes software for recognizing,
identifying, and extracting information from audio, voice, and speech data as well as speech
identification and recognition plus converting sounds into useful text. Finally, this submarket
includes software for recognizing, identifying, and extracting information from images and
video, including pattern recognition, objects, colors, and other attributes such as people, faces,
cars, and scenery. These tools are used for computer vision applications and clustering,
categorization, and search applications.
Representative vendors in this market are:

Cognitive software platforms: IBM, Saffron Technology/Intel, Palantir, IPsoft, CustomerMatrix,
CognitiveScale, Tata/Digitate, and Digital Reasoning

Search systems: Dassault Systèmes, Google, Lucidworks, Elasticsearch, HPE, IBM, Oracle,
Microsoft, Attivio, Sinequa, Coveo, Smartlogic, Expert System, and Palantir

Content analytics: Basis Technologies, SAP, SDL, Linguamatics, Lexalytics, SAS, Automated
Insights, Concept Searching, Content Analyst, Expert System, Google, Nuance, Nexidia,
Scribe, M*Modal, VoiceBox, Microsoft, IBM, HPE, Cognex, Clarifai, Imagga, Cisco, Honeywell,
NICE Systems, ObjectVideo, and IntelliVision Technologies Corp.
eDiscovery
IDC's eDiscovery software market study focuses on software and applications that span the Electronic
Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) including early case assessment applications, eDiscovery review
platforms, full spectrum eDiscovery suites, and applications focused on individual EDRM components.
These applications automate business process management and data management activities during
early case assessment, early data assessment (EDA), collection, review, analysis, and production.
These applications primarily offer search, text analytics, and data mining functions but also offer
business process workflow automation, project management, document management, and decision
support mechanisms. In most instances, these applications are offered as standalone full suite or
complementary software products. In some cases, specific applications are offered solely as add-on
modules that run atop proprietary archiving or enterprise content management platforms. The following
are representative vendors and products in this market:
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
kCura (Relativity)

Guidance Software (EnCase eDiscovery)

HPE (Autonomy eDiscovery)

Catalyst Repository Systems

Symantec (eDiscovery)

IBM (StoredIQ eDiscovery)
Enterprise Portals
Enterprise portals integrate access to information and multiple applications and present it to the
business user in a useful format. This software often provides a metadata-driven presentation
framework for developing applications that tie together capabilities often provided by other product
categories, such as team collaboration, content and document management, enterprise search,
business intelligence, and workflow and business process management. This software is used by
business users that can tailor the look and feel of their environment but must also include IT tools for
role-based or rule-based administration governing access. The following are representative vendors
and products in this market:

IBM WebSphere Portal

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (a portion of this compound product)

Oracle WebCenter Suite

SAP NetWeaver Portal
Enterprise Resource Management Applications
Enterprise resource management applications are designed to automate and optimize business
processes related to resources required to meet business or organizational objectives but are not
customer or prospect facing or specialized to various types of engineering. The resources automated
include people, finances, capital, materials, suppliers, projects, contracts, orders, and facilities. The
resulting applications forecast, track, route, analyze, and report on these resources. The market
includes software that is specific to certain industries as well as software that can handle requirements
for multiple industries.
Definitions of the relevant functional application segments are presented in the sections that follow.
Financial Applications
Financial applications are designed to support accounting, financial, and treasury and risk
management functions. The financial applications market consists of the submarkets discussed in the
sections that follow.
Financial and Accounting
Accounting software supports general financial management business processes such as accounts
payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, and fixed asset accounting, as well as more specialized
functions such as credit and collections management and automation, dispute resolution, expense
management, lease management, project accounting and costing, tax and revenue management and
reporting, nonprofit fund accounting, point of sale, and transactional financial reporting and analytics
embedded into accounting applications. Financial and accounting solutions are used by organizations
of all sizes to manage finances.
Representative vendors and products are as follows:
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
Accounting: Intuit (QuickBooks Online), Oracle Financials Cloud, SAP Simple Finance, and
Workday Financials

Point of sale: Epicor Retail Store, Oracle Retail Point-of-Sale, and NetSuite SuiteCommerce
Point of Sale

Product accounting and costing: Deltek Costpoint Essentials and Unanet Project Accounting

Revenue management (including revenue recognition, deal management, price management,
and trade promotion accounting): FinancialForce, Flintfox, Revitas, and Vendavo

Subscription and media billing: Aria Systems and Zuora

Travel and expense management: SAP's Concur, Expensify, and Infor Expense Management
Treasury and Risk Management
Treasury and risk management applications support corporate treasury operations (including the
treasuries of financial services enterprises) with the corresponding financial institution functionality and
optimize related cash management, deal management, and risk management functions, as follows:

Cash management automation includes several treasury processes involving electronic
payment authorization, bank relationship management, and cash forecasting.

Deal management automation includes processes for the implementation of trading controls,
the creation of new instruments, and market data interface from manual or third-party sources.

Risk management automation includes performance analysis, Financial Accounting Standards
(FAS) 133 compliance, calculation of various metrics used in fixed-income portfolio analysis,
and market-to-market valuations.
Representative vendors and products in this submarket include Infor, Kyriba, Misys, SAP, SunGard,
Wall Street Systems, and Wolters Kluwer (FRSGlobal).
Human Capital Management
Human capital management (HCM) applications software automates business processes that cover
the entire span of an employee's relationship with the corporation as well as management of other
human resources used by the enterprise (e.g., contingent labor, contractors, and consultants),
including — increasingly — human resources employed by suppliers and customers.
Core HR
The center of the HCM applications suite is designed for core HR functions such as employee records,
benefits administration, and payroll preparation. Increasingly, many of these functions are being
delivered through employee self-service or manager self-service to automate record keeping and
updating as well as consolidating reporting.
It is important to note that payroll processing is a separate category that is sized, forecast, and
reported out separately from human capital management.
The following are representative core HR applications vendors and products:

Infor Human Capital Management

Oracle's E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Oracle Cloud Applications

SAP Human Capital Management

Ultimate Software UltiPro

Workday
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Globalization, flexible work rules, job mobility, and the strategic importance of people assets have
forced organizations to transform their human resources systems into a more real-time, personalized,
and operational intelligence business function that goes beyond the traditional view of aggregating
personnel data. Core HR functions are being supplemented by extensions that form the basis of a new
generation of HCM applications frameworks. The extensions are categorized in five major segments or
submarkets: recruiting, incentive and compensation management, performance management, learning
management, and workforce or time management. The sections that follow describe the functional
aspects of these HCM systems.
Recruiting
Recruiting applications are designed to automate the recruitment process through better tracking of
applicants, screening and skills assessment, profiling and resume processing, and identifying talent
inside or outside the organization.
Key features include:

Managing skills inventories

Creating and managing job requisitions

Identifying appropriate employment candidates

Coordinating team collaboration within hiring processes

Facilitating resource planning

Deploying workers to appropriate jobs, projects, or teams
Representative recruiting applications include:

Kenexa (now part of IBM)

PeopleFluent

Oracle HCM Cloud
Compensation Management
Compensation management applications are designed to automate the process of planning and
administering workforce compensation, providing both compensation administrators and managers
tools to plan, calibrate, and confer salary changes. This category also includes incentive management,
which involves cash and noncash incentives to employees through advanced modeling, reporting, and
built-in interfacing to payroll accounting systems.
Key features include:

Salary budgeting and management

Quota and territory management

Calculation and distribution of commissions, spiffs, royalties, and incentives to employees and
channel and business partners

Compensation analysis using internal and external data for retention risk analysis

Linking incentives — cash and noncash — to business objectives

Payroll and payment engine interfaces

Accounts payable integration
Representative compensation and incentive management applications include:
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
ADP

Callidus TrueComp

PeopleFluent

Synygy EIM

Oracle HCM
Workforce Performance Management
Workforce performance management applications are designed to automate the aggregation and
delivery of information pertinent to the linking of job roles and the mission and goals of the
organization. More specifically, the system allows users to automate the performance review process
by using mechanisms such as training and key performance indicators (KPIs) to constantly track and
monitor the progress of an individual employee, work team, and division.
Key features include:

Assessment of individual and organizational skills gaps that impede performance and job
advancement, as in ability testing

Continuous reviews and establishing milestones

360-degree evaluation and real-time feedback

Performance appraisal automation

Competency assessment and management

Goal setting and tracking

Employee surveys

Alignment of workforce objectives to corporate objectives

Development and career planning

Fast tracks for top performers

Career and succession planning
Representative performance management applications include:

Cornerstone OnDemand

Halogen Software

PeopleFluent

SuccessFactors, an SAP company

Oracle HCM Cloud
Learning Management
Learning management applications are designed to automate the development, tracking, and delivery
of learning content and experiences to employees with the goal of improving employee skills and
productivity. Learning content ranges from traditional classroom training to online learning objects to
mentoring. Learning management is increasingly integrated with employee performance management
to prescribe development activities to ameliorate skills gaps or gaps in performance.
Key features include:

Course cataloguing and searching

Competency and skills tracking
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
Development planning

Delivery of online learning

Pre- and post-training assessments and tests

Online commerce for payments associated with training

Tools for trainers to manage class lists, syllabi, and resources

Training resource allocation

Content development tools
Representative learning management applications include:

Saba

SuccessFactors, an SAP company

SumTotal

Oracle HCM Cloud
Workforce Management
Workforce management applications are designed to automate the deployment of the workforce
through workload planning, scheduling, time and attendance tracking, resource management, and
rules and compliance management. Through extensive use of workforce management applications,
organizations are also able to develop training guidelines, career advancement plans, and incentive
compensation programs to improve, motivate, and sustain the quality of their employees.
Key features include:

Skills and certification tracking

Shift/vacation bidding

Workload planning, forecasting, and scheduling

Scheduling optimization

Customer wait-time forecasts

Coverage management

Absence management

Labor activity tracking

Rationalization of revenue per full-time equivalent

Cost of sales activities

Sales resource planning based on local and regional opportunities
Representative workforce management applications include:

Ceridian Dayforce

Infor's Workbrain Enterprise Workforce Management

Kronos

Meditech's Integrated HCIS, Scheduling, and Referral Management

WorkForce Software
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Payroll Accounting
Payroll accounting functionality provides the calculations for wages, salary, and other labor-related
payments including the tracking of stock option compensations, fringe benefits, bonuses,
commissions, and other variable and nonvariable payments. Payroll accounting also includes the
calculation and withholding of payroll taxes, garnishments, and other deductions.
As stated previously, payroll accounting is tracked separately and is not included in human capital
management.
The following are representative vendors and products in the payroll accounting market:

DATEV (LODAS and Lohn und Gehalt)

SAP (SAP Core HR and Payroll — payroll only)

Intuit (QuickBooks Payroll)

Sage (Sage 50 Payroll, Sage One Payroll, Sage Paie, Sage Lohn XL, and Sage NominaPlus)
Procurement
Procurement applications automate processes relating to purchasing supplies, material (whether direct
or indirect; raw, in process, or finished; as a result of or flowing into a product supply chain–specific
process; or in support of performing a service), and services (business or professional). The
procurement function covers sourcing, procurement, transaction processing, and payments support, all
of which are connected to create a single view of the spending levels at an organization. As a result,
purchasing activities are integrated into a supplier community that can be easily tracked,
benchmarked, and analyzed by both buyers and suppliers.
Features of these procurement modules include self-service requisitioning; order entry; approval
workflow; transaction processing including electronic data interchange (EDI) and EDI-INT; strategic
sourcing; dynamic pricing; commodity strategy and spot buying; contract discovery, management,
tracking, and enforcement; catalog aggregation and syndication; supplier performance management;
supplier enablement, onboarding, and portals; vendor-managed inventory support; invoice matching;
vendor management; spend management; and procurement analytics.
The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Basware (e-Procurement and Purchase-to-Pay)

Oracle (Oracle Procurement Cloud, Oracle E-Business Suite Advanced Procurement, and
PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management)

SAP (Contingent Workforce Management, Direct Procurement, Strategic Sourcing, and
Supplier Relationship Management)

Workday (Procurement)
Order Management
Order management applications are designed to automate sales order processing from capture to
invoice and settlement and include features to handle order planning and demand management
capabilities. Item lookup and order placement are the prerequisites of order management applications,
followed by the issuance of receipts, advanced shipping notices, and payment processing functions.
Order and product configurations, as well as pricing options, freight calculation, and credit checking,
are being combined to form an integrated order management application, regardless of the sales
channels.
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Other features include view price history, profit management, multiple order types (including quotes
and credit orders), blanket and release orders, direct ship and transfer orders, kit processing, and
product returns processing.
The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Manhattan Associates (Order Management)

Oracle (E-Business Suite Order Management)

IBM (Sterling Order Management)
Enterprise Performance Management Applications
The enterprise performance management applications market consists of cross-industry applications
whose main purpose is to measure, analyze, and optimize financial performance management,
planning, forecasting, and certain risk management processes using prepackaged applications that
include the following categories:

Budgeting and planning includes applications to support operational budgeting processes,
corporate budget consolidation and adjustment processes, and planning and forecasting
processes.

Financial consolidation and close includes applications that support both compliance with
statutory requirements and management of financial consolidation, reporting, and adjustment
processes across multiple entities and divisions. This includes functionality that manages
external financial reporting compliance requirements in the close process, management of
internal financial policies across all business operations, and assessment and analysis of the
financial risks faced by an organization. It excludes the execution of these policies that are
handled by distinct business departments including payroll, treasury management, or
procurement.

Profitability management and activity-based costing applications include packaged
applications to support detailed cost and profitability measurement and reporting processes.

Cross-functional strategy and risk management applications include those applications that
support a closed-loop performance management methodology such as the balanced
scorecard. Strategy management applications incorporate domain expertise across a range of
business processes, such as finance, human resources, operations, and CRM, to enable
strategic management of the organization. Strategy management applications help companies
collect and agree on the risk requirements faced by their operations and monitor how
effectively these risk requirements are managed across the enterprise. Enterprise risk
assessments help the organization establish the enterprise risk appetite and conduct riskadjusted performance management. In addition, this software can enable organizations to
create and manage contingency plans to be executed as either positive or negative risks are
realized. It does not directly manage any single cross-industry or vertical-specific GRC
function.
The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Adaptive Insights (Adaptive Planning and Adaptive Consolidation)

Host Analytics (Planning Cloud)

IBM (Cognos TM1, Cognos Controller, and Cognos FSR)

Intelex (Risk Management software)

Oracle (Oracle Hyperion Financial Management and Oracle Hyperion Planning)

SAP (Financial Performance Management Suite)
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
SAS (Risk Management and Profitability Management)
Project and Portfolio Management
Project and portfolio management (PPM) applications are used for automating and optimizing the
initiating, planning/scheduling, allocation, monitoring, and measuring of activities and resources
required to complete projects. In addition, the portfolio management capabilities enable the tracking of
an aggregation of projects, products, programs, and/or initiatives to oversee resource allocation, for
making ongoing investment and prioritization decisions, and track risks — as part of an overall portfolio
with associated processes and workflows. Ultimately, PPM applications help organizations manage
the scope, time, value, and cost of discrete sets of related people processes (projects) on an individual
and portfolio basis. PPM applications enable these capabilities and can also be used as a module of a
suite in some instances to provide project, program, and portfolio management functionality. There are
many vertical and targeted applications of PPM solutions — for example, PPM can be used in
architectural/engineering/construction (AEC), manufacturing (new product development and
introduction [NPDI]), utilities, professional services, facilities, asset and capital management, and other
solutions, leveraging the primary premise of successful "project" completion as a core business
purpose. Enterprise PPM (EPPM) encompasses the use of PPM capabilities across areas as a
horizontal use case. IT project portfolio management (ITPPM) incorporates PPM capabilities in the
context of IT projects, so this use case can be applied horizontally across areas requiring software
creation or other IT initiatives. PPM solutions are used as a core module in vertical enterprise resource
planning solutions purpose built for businesses that deliver a project instead of a product, like
professional services firms, legal firms, advertising/PR firms, and engineering services. These
solutions are called professional services automation (PSA) and services resource planning (SRP).
PSA/SRP solutions, although they have a PPM module, are very broad and are covered as a vertical
variant of the enterprise resource management (ERM) market. The following are representative
vendors and products in this market:

CA Technologies (CA Clarity PPM)

Meridian Proliance

Microsoft Project (Microsoft Project Professional and Microsoft Project Server)

Oracle (Oracle Fusion PPM and Oracle Primavera P6 Project Portfolio Management)

Planview

SAP PPM (Project and Portfolio Management)
Enterprise Asset Management
Enterprise asset management applications software automates the many aspects of managing an
organization's physical assets: asset performance management, asset life-cycle management,
computerized maintenance management, facilities management, fleet management, integrated
workplace management, and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operations. The software
generally includes functionality for planning, organizing, and implementing maintenance activities,
whether they are performed by employees of the organization or by a contractor, volunteer, or other
individual. Typical features include equipment history record management, descriptions of items
maintained, scheduling, preventive and predictive maintenance on the assets, work order
management, labor tracking (if integrated within the maintenance management applications), spare
parts management, and maintenance reporting. An organization's assets may include buildings, oil
rigs, pipelines, mining equipment, manufacturing equipment, fleets, and more that may be stationary
but are often moving, floating, and flying, increasing the need for sensors, mobile, and wearable
technologies to manage these large, complex, expensive, and often aging assets.
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The following are representative vendors and products in the market:

ABB Ventyx (Enterprise Asset Management)

IBM (IBM Maximo Asset Management and IBM TRIRIGA Facility Management)

IFS (Enterprise Asset Management)

Infor (Infor EAM Enterprise, Infor EAM Energy Performance Management, and Infor MP2)

Oracle (Oracle Enterprise Asset Management and PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management)

Ramco (Enterprise Asset Management)
Supply Chain Management Applications
Supply chain management application software automates supply- and demand-side business
processes that bring a product or a service to market, including multisite organizations involved in a
complex supply chain process, including raw materials suppliers, contract manufacturers, 3PL and
4PL providers, and individual transportation and warehousing organizations. Definitions of the relevant
functional application markets are presented in the sections that follow.
Logistics
Logistics application software automates activities relating to moving inventory or materials of any
type. Examples include software that automates distribution resource planning, transportation
planning, and transportation optimization business processes that are not specific to an industry.
(Logistics applications specific to the transportation industry are included in the services operations
management applications market.) The following are representative vendors and products in this
market:

Manhattan Associates (Transportation Lifecycle Management)

RedPrairie (Transportation Management)

JDA (Transportation and Logistics Management)
Production Planning
Production planning (PP) applications software automates activities related to the collaborative
forecast and continuous optimization of manufacturing processes. PP applications span supply
planning, demand planning, and production planning within organizations. These applications identify
demand signals, aggregate historical data that informs short- and long-term demand expectations, and
provide supplier capabilities across multiple manufacturing sites. Production planning application
software is key to any supply chain management initiative because supply and demand planning
dictates the rest of the supply chain activities. The following are representative vendors and products
in this market:

Aspen Technology (Aspen Collaborative Demand Manager and Aspen Supply Chain Planner)

Oracle (Advanced Planning Command Center, Advanced Supply Chain Planning,
Collaborative Planning, and Demand Management)

SAP (Supply Chain Planning and Collaboration)
Inventory Management
Inventory management application software automates activities relating to managing physical
inventory, whether direct or indirect; raw, in process, or finished; as a result of or flowing into a product
supply chain–specific business process; or in support of performing a service. This includes inventory
control/materials management business processes in any industry, not just in manufacturing. It also
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includes all aspects of warehouse planning and management. The following are representative
vendors and products in this market:

CDC (CatalystCommand Warehouse Management)

SAP (SAP SCM Warehouse Management)

JDA Software (RedPrairie Warehouse Management)
Operations and Manufacturing Applications
Operations and manufacturing applications are enterprise applications that automate and optimize
processes related to the planning and execution of services operations and manufacturing activities,
as well as other back-office activities. The resources automated include people, capital, materials, and
facilities. The applications track, route, analyze, and report on these resources. The market includes
software that is specific to services, manufacturing, and other industries. Definitions of the relevant
functional application segments are presented in the sections that follow.
Services Operations Management
Services operations management (SOM) applications support the services supply chain and are
unique to particular industries. These industry-specific applications cover a broad range of activities
such as automating claim processes (as applied to insurance functions), automating
admissions/discharges and transfers of patients (as applied to healthcare functions), or automating
energy trading (as applied to energy and utility functions). Other examples of industry-specific
applications are those that enable the automation of real estate, business, legal services, banking and
finance, education, government, social services, and transportation. SOM also includes software
applications that enable communications and data transfer between devices that perform business and
services operations that are specific to services industries like healthcare, government, and
transportation. Please note that not all applications sold partially or exclusively to one or more vertical
industries qualify for this market. If an application performs a payroll function, for example, but it is
designed and sold only to the insurance industry, it would still be included in the payroll accounting
market. The application must be designed to perform a function unique to a particular industry in order
to qualify for the SOM market. The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Cerner Corp. (Millennium)

McKesson ClaimsXten for insurance claims management

Oracle Utilities
Manufacturing
Functional applications in manufacturing include material and capacity requirements planning (MRP),
bill of materials (BOMs), recipe management, manufacturing process planning and simulation, work
order generation and reporting, shop floor control, quality control and tolerance analysis, and other
functions specific to manufacturing execution (MES). The category does not include computer-aided
manufacturing (CAM) applications for NC and CMM machine programming. (Advanced planning and
scheduling applications are included in the supply chain production planning functional market.)
Representative vendors and products in this market are:

Aspen Technology's PIMS for production planning and optimization

Dassault's DELMIA production process planning and simulation applications

Siemens Tecnomatix's Assembly Planning and Validation
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Other Back Office
Other back-office applications include various types of application automating functions not otherwise
covered previously, such as computer-based training, elearning applications, speech and natural
language, translation and globalization software, and environmental health and safety applications.
These applications also cover a wide range of point solutions for product-related applications other
than services operations management and manufacturing. These applications have at their core a
product orientation focused on efficiencies related to item maintenance, replenishment, and site
management. Among them are retail- and wholesale-specific applications. Representative vendors
and products in this market are:

Epicor's Retail Software Systems

JDA Trade Event Management for retail

Oracle Retail Merchandise Operations Management

SAP EH&S
Engineering Applications
Engineering applications automate all of the business processes and data management activities
specific to ideas management, concept planning, and design and the handoff of a design to execution
(manufacturing, construction, or other). The markets include mechanical computer-aided design
(MCAD), CAM, computer-aided engineering (CAE), collaborative product data management, and other
engineering applications, which include those for electronic design automation (EDA) and
architecture/engineering/construction or building infrastructure information management (BIIM).
Definitions of the engineering application segments are presented in the sections that follow.
Mechanical Computer-Aided Design
MCAD software is utilized for tasks typically performed by designers and drafters. Specifically, this
category includes computer-assisted designing, drafting, and modeling (wire frame, surface, and
solid). MCAD also includes conceptual design and/or industrial design, animation and visualization,
and assembly design. (Light geometry visualization such as Siemens PLM's [previously UGS'] JT,
Oracle's [previously Agile's] AutoVue, or Autodesk's DWF is included in cPDM.) The following are
representative vendors and products in this market:

Dassault Systèmes CATIA and SOLIDWORKS

PTC Pro/ENGINEER

Siemens PLM NX and Velocity
Mechanical Computer-Aided Engineering
Mechanical CAE applications address tasks such as structural/stress analysis, kinematics, fluid
dynamics, thermal analysis, and test data analysis. The following are representative vendors and
products in this market:

ANSYS analysis products

Autodesk Moldflow Corp.

MSC Software Nastran and Patran analysis products
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Mechanical Computer-Aided Manufacturing
Mechanical CAM applications prepare data for actual production on the shop floor (e.g., NC tape
generation and data for CNC machines). The following are representative vendors and products in this
market:

Cimatron CimatronE NC

CNC Software Mastercam

Siemens PLM NX
Collaborative Product Data Management
Collaborative product data management (cPDM) applications provide engineering groups, but also
increasingly cross-disciplinary teams across the enterprise as well as outside of its four walls, with
software tools to electronically coordinate, manage, and share product data throughout the product life
cycle. The major subsegments of this market are product data vaulting, document management, light
geometry with view/markup capabilities (collaboration), change management, and parts libraries.
Workflow, ideas management, and product-focused environmental compliance management are now
emerging as additional application subsegments. The following are representative vendors and
products in this market:

Oracle Agile Software and AutoVue

Siemens PLM Teamcenter

Sopheon Accolade for Product Innovation and Accolade Process Manager
Other Engineering
Other engineering applications support electronic design automation,
architectural/engineering/construction, and other engineering functions. AEC applications software
automates drawing/design of building-related and civil engineering–related projects. (AEC project and
portfolio planning and facilities management are part of the project and portfolio management
functional market.) The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Autodesk Building Information Modelling (BIM) applications

Bentley Systems GEOPAK Civil Engineering Suite
Customer Relationship Management Applications
CRM applications automate the customer-facing business processes within an organization,
irrespective of industry specificity (i.e., sales, marketing, customer service, and contact center).
Collectively, these applications serve to manage the entire life cycle of a customer — including the
process of brand building, conversion of a prospect to a customer, and the servicing of a customer —
and help an organization build and maintain successful relationships. Interactions in support of this
process can occur through multiple channels of communication. Channels of communication include
but are not limited to email, phone, social, and on a Web site.
Additional technologies impacting CRM are as follows:

Social CRM. IDC includes functionality that incorporates social capabilities within a CRM
construct within the relevant functional market. Social listening and social media analytics and
social media management and marketing are included in the marketing segment. Social sales
applications are included in sales, and social service applications are included in customer
service.
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
SaaS. CRM applications that are offered through an on-demand or SaaS delivery model are
categorized within the appropriate functional market.

Digital commerce. IDC defines digital commerce application software as applications that are
directly involved in or linked to the application in which an order is placed or accepted,
therefore representing a commitment for a transfer of funds in exchange for goods or services.
Included in this process is the presentation of the product to the customer in the form of an
online catalog. As is the case with other competitive software markets, digital commerce
applications derive from existing functional markets. Applications that manage the catalog and
customer-facing portions of the digital commerce process are categorized in the appropriate
CRM market.
Definitions of the CRM application segments are presented in the sections that follow.
Sales
Sales automation applications include both sales management applications and sales force
automation (SFA) applications. Functionality includes the following:

Account/contact management

Shopping cart

Lead management

Mobile sales

Opportunity management

Partner relationship management (PRM)

Sales analysis and planning tools

Sales configuration tools including configure, price, and quote

Sales history

Team selling

Telemarketing and telesales scripting

Territory management
The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Oracle (Oracle Sales, Oracle's Siebel Sales, Oracle Sales Prospector, and Oracle CRM On
Demand Sales)

salesforce.com (Sales Cloud2)

SAP (SAP Sales and SAP Cloud for Sales)

SAVO Group (SAVO)

Swiftpage (ACT!)
Marketing
Marketing applications software automates a wide range of individual and collaborative activities
associated with the various components of the marketing process, including strategic marketing
activities over more operational, campaign-related activities to catalogue-based digital commerce and
trade promotions management. Newer areas of functionality included in the marketing segment are
social media analytics, social listening, social influence, and social media management and marketing
applications.
Functionality includes the following:
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
Ad management/placement

Brand management

Campaign planning, execution, and management

Collateral management/distribution

Direct/database marketing

Electronic catalog/storefront solutions

Email marketing

Social media management and marketing

Sentiment analysis

Customer, segmentation, and predictive analytics

Event/trade show management

Focus groups/media testing

Lead generation/qualification/distribution

List management

Marketing resource management

Media and analyst relations

Mobile device marketing

Personalization

Primary research

Surveying

Trade promotion management

Upselling and cross-selling programs

Web activity analysis

Web advertising
The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Adobe (Adobe Marketing Cloud)

IBM (Coremetrics [IBM customer analytics solutions], Silverpop, Tealeaf, Unica, and Xtify)

Marketo

Oracle (Oracle Marketing Cloud)

SAP (hybris Marketing suite and SAP Trade Promotion Optimization)

Salesforce.com Marketing Cloud (Buddy Media, Radian6, and ExactTarget)

SAS (Marketing Resource Management, Campaign Management, and Real-Time Decision
Manager)

Teradata Integrated Marketing Cloud
Customer Service
Customer service applications provide customer/client (e.g., patient and student) information
management (CIM). Each application is designed to enhance the management of relationships with
existing customers. Customer service software is used to service customers that are external to an
organization. Newer capability added to the segment includes social service response.
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Defining characteristics of the customer service category include case management, customer history,
and incoming contact management. Functionality includes:

Automated assistants

Case assignment and management

Conferencing

Customer communities software

Email response management

Field service

Live collaboration and chat

Self-service

Web chat

Social network response
IT help desk applications are covered under "problem management" in the system management
software category and are thus excluded from this market. The following are representative vendors
and products in the customer service application market:

Amdocs (Contact Center, Smart Agent Desktop, and Customer Service and Support)

Aptean (Consona Service and Support)

Lithium (Social Customer Community Software and Social Customer Support)

Oracle (Oracle Service and Oracle Service Cloud)

salesforce.com (Service Cloud 2)

SAP (SAP Cloud for Service and SAP CRM for Service)

Verint (KANA Enterprise and LAGAN Enterprise)
Contact Center
Contact center applications automate functions relating to the operations of the CRM installation.
These applications, although enabling in function, do not have a desktop end-user focus. Products
included in this category are ACD, predictive dialing, telephony integration, and universal queuing. The
following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Aspect (Call Center ACD and Unified IP)

Avaya (Call Center, Interaction Center, Contact Center Express, and Customer Interaction
Express)

Genesys (Customer Interaction Management Platform, Agent Desktop, Proactive Contact, and
Voice Platform)

SAP (SAP Contact Center)
Application Development and Deployment Market Definitions
Structured Data Management Software
Structured data management software includes products that manage a common set of defined data
that is kept in one or more databases (structures of managed data shared by multiple application
programs) and is driven by data definitions and rules, whether this involves single databases accessed
directly by applications or distributed databases accessed by multiple applications in multiple
locations. The distinguishing characteristic of all structured data management software products is that
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they use definitions of data structure and behavior along with rules governing their integrity, validity,
security, and, in some cases, alternative formats to manage the storage, movement, and manipulation
of data kept in databases. The user community for structured data management software typically
includes database administrators, data modeling analysts, data administrators, and developers of
database-intensive applications.
A database management system (DBMS) is a software entity that manages a database in such a way
that it may be queried and randomly updated. Two of the functional markets we define in the sections
that follow — relational database management systems and nonrelational database management
systems — are schematic database management systems. Schematic DBMSs, including relational and
nonrelational DBMSs, are governed by schemas. The schema indicates the structure of the data,
including its various data objects (which may be referred to as "record types," "object types," "classes,"
or "tables," depending on the paradigm of the DBMS in question and the types of relationships or
associations among these objects). The schema contains rules governing the organization of such
associations (such as optionality and cardinality) and the object formats (including field, column, or
attribute types, valid values). It may also contain security rules governing access to the data. The
schema enables multiple applications having separate code bases to share common data without
sharing program source code. In most cases (especially with RDBMS), the database may also be
queried by an end user without requiring program code specifically developed for that purpose, simply
by traversing the data structure as defined by the schema.
Dynamic data management systems, the third market in this section, share some characteristics with
DBMSs; they support the common storage and retrieval of data that is optimized in a managed
environment for quick saving and retrieval, or query, or both. The key difference, and what makes
them "dynamic," is that they have no schema but depend on program code to define their contents. In
some cases, they use embedded tagging to indicate the names of fields. In other cases, that
knowledge must be present in the application software. They are used in cases where the data may
not be well defined at the time of ingestion or where the application data requirements change so
frequently that schematic management represents unacceptable overhead, slowing down the
development process.
Relational Database Management Systems
The relational database management system market includes multiuser DBMSs that are primarily
organized according to the relational paradigm and that use SQL, or a protocol like SQL (such as
ODBC or JDBC) as the foundational language for data definition and access. A relational DBMS
includes a schema that defines the ways that data is accepted and returned in terms of tables having
columns, with rows uniquely identified by a primary key for each table, and with columns that are used
to relate rows in different tables to each other through a value reference called a foreign key. Also
included in this market are RDBMSs that have been extended to support embedded tables or other
nonrelational enhancements or include extended attribute types (such as graphical, geospatial, and
audio), object-oriented formalisms (such as data encapsulation), or direct support for XML data. It also
includes NewSQL DBMSs that may feature late schema binding, elastic scalability, and dynamic
schema change. The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Actian (Ingres, Matrix, and Vector)

IBM (DB2 family and the Informix family)

Microsoft (Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL Database)

NuoDB (NuoDB)

Oracle (Oracle Database, TimesTen, and MySQL)
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SAP (SAP HANA, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, SAP IQ, and SAP SQL Anywhere)

Teradata (Teradata and Aster Database)
Nonrelational Database Management Systems
Nonrelational database management systems are schematic DBMSs that are not based on the
relational paradigm. They use a variety of other approaches to the organization, management, storage,
and retrieval of data. Types of nonrelational DBMSs are discussed in the sections that follow.
End-User Database Management Systems
End-user DBMSs (EUDBMSs) are schematic, but the schema is simple and its definition process is
informal. EUDBMSs enable end users to define and manage their own data without any need for
formal database administration. Such DBMSs typically reside on desktop operating environments, on
workgroup servers, or in the cloud. They are used by knowledge workers either individually or in
collaboration with others. These tools typically include a DBMS engine tightly integrated with a
scripting language and report writer or other visualization facility, which provides a localized
environment for data management and analysis.
Navigational Database Management Systems
A navigational DBMS is accessed using explicit navigation of the structure by the problem program
and is typically organized using either the CODASYL or a proprietary structure. List oriented,
hierarchical, B-tree indexed, network, and inverted list are examples of organizations included in this
category. The data is normally managed and accessed through a proprietary language or API, though
most of these products also support access through standardized interfaces such as SQL, ODBC,
JDBC, ADO.NET, Java Entity Beans, and various Web services.
Object-Oriented Database Management Systems
Object-oriented DBMSs (OODBMSs) are designed to provide data storage and support services using
an object-oriented architecture. An object-oriented DBMS supports the basic features of objectoriented development, including inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, and state. Unlike the other
types of DBMSs, the OODBMS provides an implicit set of services associated with classes in the
application object model that have been identified as "persistent," so there is no API, DML, or service
call to be invoked by application code. Because of the intimate relationship between the OODBMS
data organization and the application, it is schematic, and its database schema must be aligned, either
implicitly or explicitly, with the class structure of the application. Also, an OODBMS must explicitly
support (through header files and runtime libraries) each language to be used with it. These languages
typically include Smalltalk, C++, C#, and Java.
Multivalue Database Management Systems
A multivalue DBMS is schematic and has an internal structure that supports nested data lists or
structures. It layers over that structure a set of access and management services that operate
according to one or more abstraction paradigms, which usually include both relational and objectoriented functionality. These products typically have proprietary DDL and DML and sets of APIs or
drivers but can be accessed using standard SQL and other standard interfaces as well. Although they
may support object-oriented data definition and manipulation, they differ from object-oriented DBMSs
in that they make the database an explicit external service to which the application connects through
an API or service layer. By contrast, object-oriented DBMSs enable the user to define database
components as classes within the application object model and manipulate the database through
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methods inherited from a DBMS class library, thus making the DBMS itself an implicit service of the
application's environment.
Representative NDBMS Products by Type
The following are representative vendors and products in the nonrelational DBMS market:




End-user database management systems:

Binary Brilliant (Brilliant Database)

CA Technologies (Clipper)

FileMaker, subsidiary of Apple Computer (FileMaker)

Microsoft (Access and FoxPro)
Navigational DBMSs:

CA Technologies (IDMS and Datacom)

IBM (IMS)

Oracle (Berkeley DB)

Software AG (Adabas)
Object-oriented database management systems:

Actian (Versant ODS)

Objectivity (Objectivity/DB)

ObjectStore (ObjectStore)
Multivalue DBMSs:

Enea (Polyhedra)

InterSystems (Caché)

Matisse (Matisse)

Rocket Software (UniVerse and UniData)

TigerLogic (TL Pick)
Dynamic Data Management Systems
A dynamic data management system can accept data without requiring that the structure and elements
of the data be defined in advance. These include scalable data collection managers (the most common
being Hadoop) and dynamic DBMSs. Because they do not require the use of SQL, dynamic DBMSs
are sometimes called NoSQL database systems. There are two categories of dynamic DBMS:

Semi-schematic — where the data may be governed by a schema, but one is not required (Any
data may be entered into the database that conforms to the general data format of the DBMS if
no schema is present. If a schema is present, it governs the data and optimizes database
operation on that basis.)

Non-schematic — where no schema is required and any data conforming to the general format
of the database may be added
The resulting collection of data may end up being rationalized under a schematic structure (in the
semi-schematic case), mapped based on field names and values, or simply accessed by means of
key-value pairs. Types of dynamic data management systems are discussed in the sections that
follow.
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Document-Oriented Database Systems
Document-oriented database systems manage data blocks containing fields that are identified
according to a generally accepted document format. The two most common such formats are
Extensible Markup Language (XML) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Some document-oriented
databases require the documents to be uniquely identified by a key value, and others do not. Some
are semi-schematic, supporting the assertion of a document schema to ensure structural consistency,
or simply facilitate document queries, and others are not. Some index all the fields, others allow users
to designate some fields for indexing, and some don't index at all. Some document-oriented database
systems have full DBMS capabilities for those that wish to take advantage of them, including schema
support, optimized SQL query support, and relationship integrity constraint support.
Key-Accessible Database Systems
Key-accessible databases are non-schematic and store data in a way that supports random retrieval
by key value or retrieval in key-value order. They are not true database management systems, since
they merely facilitate the storage and retrieval of data according to certain optimized techniques but do
not actually manage the database per se; the applications do that. There are two recognized keyaccessible database system types:

Keyed block stores, also called key-value stores: These are the simplest in concept. They
store blocks of data that are identified by key value; the rest of the data is program defined.
They incorporate no intrinsic knowledge of fields or relationships.

Keyed column stores, sometimes called wide column stores: These store blocks of datacontaining columns, which are lists of values. One of these columns is the key column. The
columns are grouped into column families. Within each family, the values in each column are
related to the values in every other column according to their position in the list. They are
sometimes called wide column stores because column families often have very large numbers
of columns, and the data is typically completely un-normalized.
Graph Database Management Systems
Graph DBMS software manages data as graph structures. These contain objects sometimes called
"nodes" or "vertices" with recursive attributed relationships, sometimes called "edges." The attributes
of the objects and relationships are called "properties." Unlike a fully schematic database, the structure
of a graph database is derived from the relationship structure that is found in the instance data.
Such databases can be thought of as schematic in some cases because some graph DBMSs support
the assignment of attributes and constraints for nodes and vertices in metadata. In a larger sense,
however, schemas do not define data organization; rather the database is designed to discover that
organization. In some cases, the schema structure (i.e., the acceptable patterns of combinations of
nodes, edges, and properties) may be predefined and fixed, and in other cases, it may be inferred from
the data as it is ingested. Graph databases are used to capture and analyze extremely complex
relationship instance structures. Common use cases include genealogy-based, spatial-based, and law
enforcement (or intelligence service)–based "known associates" analysis. Graphs are also used in
pharmacological research, epidemiology, and utility network analysis.
Scalable Data Collection Managers
Scalable data collection managers are not really DBMSs since they do not manage data directly but
provide an environment for data management. These systems are sets of cluster management, file
management, and application execution software designed to facilitate applications that collect large
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amounts of data, sift through and organize that data, and perform analytics on the data. The data
collection may or may not end up containing one or more databases.
Currently, the only software in this category comes from the Apache Hadoop family of open source
software projects. The relevant components, in this regard, are so-called "core Hadoop" (Hadoop
Common, HDFS, Hadoop MapReduce, and YARN) as well as Spark, Ambari, Pig, Tez, and
ZooKeeper. It should be noted that Apache Spark, though usually deployed on HDFS, can run on its
own clustering environment without Hadoop at all, but is closely related to Hadoop and supported by
all the leading Hadoop distributors. HBase is a keyed column store, and Hive is data access
infrastructure software in the data integration and integrity software market, though when these are
bundled under a single subscription fee with core Hadoop, their revenue is counted altogether in this
market.
Representative DDMS Products by Type
The following are representative vendors and products in the dynamic data management systems
market:




Document-oriented database systems:

Amazon DynamoDB

Couchbase

IBM (Cloudant)

MongoDB

MarkLogic (MarkLogic)

Software AG (webMethods Tamino)

Xpriori (XMS)
Key-accessible database systems:

Amazon (SimpleDB)

Apache HBase

Basho (Riak)

DataStax (distributor of Apache Cassandra)

Google (Bigtable, a component of Google App Engine)

Oracle (Oracle NoSQL Database)
Graph database management systems:

DataStax (Titan)

Franz Inc. (AllegroGraph)

Neo Technology (Neo4j)

Objectivity (InfiniteGraph)

OrientDB

YarcData (Urika)
Scalable data collection managers

Amazon EMR

Cloudera (Hadoop)

Hortonworks (Hadoop)

MapR (Hadoop)
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
Microsoft HDInsight

Pivotal HD
Database Development and Management Tools
Database development and management tools are used to develop, load, reload, reorganize, recover,
or otherwise manage and optimize databases and maintain replica databases for recovery,
performance, or availability purposes. Tools used to archive, mask, and subset database data also
belong to this market. Tools used to build logical models of the data are also included. This category
also includes database-specific accelerators, SQL optimization tools, database security, and other
database utilities. This market includes the submarket segments that follow.
Database Administration Tools
This submarket includes database monitoring and tuning tools and other tools for performing routine
database administration (DBA) tasks such as reorganizations, rebuilding indexes, reallocating
database storage, changing and redefining indexes, and tuning optimization options. Representative
companies include:

BMC (BMC Data Management for IMS and DB2 on z/OS)

CA Technologies (CA Database Management products for DB2 and IMS)

Dell (Toad product family)

IDERA (Database Management Solutions)
Database Replication Software
This software is used for maintaining an exact copy of a live database or a subset of a live database,
typically for recoverability, high availability, or nonstop maintenance purposes, or to distribute the
database workload or isolate workload components by segregating them and assigning them to
separate, replicated instances. Representative companies include:

Dell (SharePlex)

Oracle (Oracle GoldenGate)

SAP (SAP Replication Server)

Vision Solutions (MIMIX)
Data Modeling Tools
Data modeling (DM) tools address database design, development, and master data management.
Representative vendors and products include:

Embarcadero Technologies (ERwin)

IBM (InfoSphere Data Architect)
Database Archiving and ILM Software
Products in this segment are used to manage the evolution of data from its creation to removal from
the database and include database subsetting, data masking, and test data–generation tools as well as
tools that build and maintain archives of databases, often allowing transparent access to archived
data, preserving original schema information about archived data and intelligence for selecting
referentially complete subsets of data for archiving. (Such products can also be used to create
referentially complete subsets of databases for populating subset or test databases.) Examples of
companies in this submarket include:
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
HPE (HP Integrated Archive Platform)

IBM (Optim)

Informatica (Informatica Data Archive, Data Subset, and Data Privacy)

Solix (Solix Enterprise Data Management Solutions)
Database Development and Optimization Software
This segment includes database management software such as SQL authoring tools and SQL
optimization and analysis tools. It also includes software for database security, database caching, and
database acceleration. Sample providers are:

Dell (Toad for Database Developers)

Delphix

IDERA (Database Development Solutions)

ScaleArc
Database Security Software
This segment includes software that enhances database security, usually in one or more of four ways:
through database log analysis for the detection of improper data access, database access control,
dynamic data masking, or database encryption. Sample providers are:

BlueTalon

Imperva

Protegrity (Data Security Platform)

Trustwave (DbProtect)
Dynamic Data Grid Managers
Dynamic data grid managers (DDGMs) manage data that is being used and constantly altered by
running application processes. This software enables those processes, running either on a single
system or multiple systems in a network, to share this data. The data is transient rather than recorded
data and so is relevant to application tasks at the specific time it is accessed and is generally
contextually specific. As such, this software does not include database management systems, which
manage recorded data that is application neutral and independent of context.
Like a DBMS, a DDGM usually (though not always) has metadata that defines the data it manages,
and it may also ensure recoverability of long application tasks through a persistent log or by redundant
systems synchronization. A DDGM may be associated with a back-end DBMS that records the final
state of data collections that the DDGM manages; that back-end DBMS may be specific to the DDGM,
or it may be a general-purpose DBMS, such as a RDBMS. The DBMS is not part of this product,
however.
The DDGM is typically memory based, managing its data as collections in main memory (which may
be swapped to disk in cases where the amount of memory is insufficient to handle all the data; in this
way, it resembles a virtual memory manager). It may or may not use locking to control concurrent
access, and it may or may not have a notion of write ownership of specific data elements. Even in such
cases, its method of granting access to data is generally less formal than that of a DBMS.
The purpose of the DDGM is to allow an application's processes to be spread across many servers in
a network or nodes in a cluster while closely sharing data. Typical application architectures for DDGM
include a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and a distributed process Web application running on a
cluster. Sometimes, a DDGH is persistent, writing its data to disk for recoverability, and its vendor may
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call it a "database." It is not a DBMS, however, if it cannot be used to share data across applications
(except by sharing program code) or query end users. Thus key-value stores used to share data
across instances of an application for the purpose of performance and scalability, without governing
metadata for application-neutral data sharing, are also DDGMs.
Examples of DDGMs include:

Aurea Software (DataXtend SI)

Oracle (Oracle Coherence)

Red Hat (JBoss Data Grid)

SAP Data Services

Pivotal (GemFire)
Data Integration and Integrity Software
Data integration and integrity (DI) software enables the access, blending, movement, and integrity of
data among multiple data sources. The purpose of data integration is to ensure the consistency of
information where there is a logical overlap of the information content of two or more discrete systems.
Data integration is increasingly being used to capture, prepare, and curate data for analytics. It is also
the conduit through which new data types, structures, and content transformation can occur in modern
IT environments that are inclusive of relational, nonrelational, and semi-structured data repositories.
Data integration software employs a wide range of technologies, including, but not limited to, extract,
transform, and load (ETL); change data capture (CDC); federated access; format and semantic
mediation; data quality and profiling; and associated metadata management. Data access is
increasingly becoming open with standards-based APIs; however, there is still a segment of this
market focused on data connectivity software, which includes data connectors and connectivity drivers
for legacy technologies and orchestration of API calls.
DI software may be used in a wide variety of functions. The most common is that of building and
maintaining a data warehouse, but other uses include enterprise information integration, data
migration, database consolidation, master data management (MDM), reference data management,
metadata management, and database synchronization, to name a few. Data integration may be
deployed and executed as batch processes, typical for data warehouses, or in near-real-time modes
for data synchronization or dedicated operational data stores. A data migration can also be considered
a one-time data integration. Although most applications of DIA software are centered on structured
data in databases, they may also include integrating data from disparate, distributed unstructured or
semi-structured data sources, including flat files, XML files, and legacy applications, Big Data
persistence technologies, and the proprietary data sources associated with commercial applications
from vendors such as SAP and Oracle. More recently, an interactive form of data integration has
emerged in the application of self-service data preparation.
The data integration and integrity software market includes the submarkets discussed in the sections
that follow.
Bulk Data Movement Software
This software, commonly referred to as extract, transform, and load software, selectively draws data
from source databases, transforms it into a common format, merges it according to rules governing
possible collisions, and loads it into a target. A derivative of this process, extract, load, and transform
(ELT), can be considered synonymous with ETL for the purpose of market definition and analysis. ELT
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is an alternative commonly used by database software vendors to leverage the inherent data
processing performance of database platforms. ETL and/or ELT software normally runs in batch but
may also be invoked dynamically by command. It could be characterized as providing the ability to
move many things (data records) in one process.
The following are representative companies in this submarket:

IBM (InfoSphere DataStage)

Informatica (PowerCenter)

Oracle (Oracle Data Integrator)

SAP (SAP Data Integrator, SAP Data Services, HANA Smart Data Integration)

SAS (SAS Data Management)

Talend (Open Studio for Data Integration)
Dynamic Data Movement Software
Vendors often refer to this functionality as providing "real time" data integration; however, it can only
ever be "near" real time due to the latency inherent in sensing and responding to a data change event
occurring dynamically inside a database. Data changes are either captured through a stored procedure
associated with a data table or field trigger or a change data capture (CDC) facility that is either log or
agent based.
These solutions actively move the data associated with the change among correspondent databases,
driven by metadata that defines interrelationships among the data managed by those databases. The
software is able to perform transformation and routing of the data, inserting or updating the target,
depending on the rules associated with the event that triggered the change. It normally either features
a runtime environment or operates by generating the program code that does the extracting,
transforming, and routing of the data and updating of the target. It could be characterized as software
that moves one thing (data record or change) many times.
The following are representative companies in this segment:

ETI (ETI)

IBM (InfoSphere Data Replication)

Informatica (PowerCenter Real Time Edition)

Oracle (Oracle GoldenGate)

SAP (SAP Replication Server, SAP Data Services)
Data Quality Software
This submarket includes products used to identify errors or inconsistencies in data, normalize data
formats, infer update rules from changes in data, validate against data catalog and schema definitions,
and match data entries with known values. Data quality activities are normally associated with data
integration tasks such as match/merge and federated joins but may also be used to monitor the quality
of data in the database, either in near real time or on a scheduled basis.
The data quality software submarket also includes purpose-built software that can interpret,
deduplicate, and correct data in specific domains such as customers, locations, and products. Vendors
with domain-specific capabilities typically offer products that manage mailing lists and feed data into
customer relationship management and marketing systems. The following are representative
companies in this submarket:
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
Experian Data Quality

IBM (InfoSphere Discovery, BigInsights BigQuality)

Informatica (Informatica Data Quality and Data as a Service)

Melissa Data

Pitney Bowes (Code-1 Plus and Finalist)

SAP (SAP Data Services, SAP HANA Smart Data Quality)

SAS Data Quality

Talend (Talend Open Studio for Data Quality)

Trillium Software
Data Access Infrastructure
This software is used to establish connections between users or applications and data sources without
requiring a direct connection to the data source's API or hard-coded database interface. It includes
cross-platform connectivity software. It also includes ODBC and JDBC drivers and application and
database adapters. The following are representative companies in this submarket:

Micro Focus (Attachmate Databridge)

Information Builders (iWay Integration Solutions)

Progress Software (DataDirect Connect and DataDirect Cloud)

Rocket Software (Rocket Data)
Composite Data Framework
This market segment includes data federation and data virtualization software, enabling multiple
clients (usually applications, application components, or databases running on the same or different
servers in a network) to share data in a way that reduces latency. Usually involving a cache, this
software sometimes also provides transaction support, including maintaining a recovery log.
Data federation permits access to multiple databases as if they were one database. Most are read
only, but some provide update capabilities. Data virtualization products are similar but offer full schema
management coordinated with the source database schemas to create a complete database
environment that sits atop multiple disparate physical databases. Originally created to provide the data
services layer of a service-oriented architecture, data virtualization has been applied to multiple use
cases including data abstraction, rapid prototyping of data marts and reports, and providing abilities for
data distribution without replication.
The following are representative companies in this submarket:

Cisco Data Virtualization Platform

Denodo

IBM (InfoSphere Federation Server)

Informatica Data Virtualization

Red Hat (JBoss Data Virtualization)

SAS (SAS Federation Server)
Master Data Definition and Control Software
The master data definition and control software market segment includes products that help
organizations define and maintain master data, which is of significance to the enterprise and multiple
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systems. Master data is usually categorized by one of four domains: party (people, organizations),
product (including services), financial assets (accounts, investments), and location (physical property
assets).
Master data definition and control software manages metadata regarding entity relationships,
attributes, hierarchies, and processing rules to ensure the integrity of master data for where it is to be
used. Key functionalities include master data modeling, import and export, and the definition and
configuration of rules for master data handling such as versioning, access, synchronization, and
reconciliation.
This market segment also includes reference data management software. Reference data is used to
categorize or classify other data and is typically limited to a finite set of allowable values aligned with a
value domain. Domains can be public such as time zones, countries and subdivisions, currencies,
units of measurement, or proprietary codes used within an organization. Domains can also be industry
specific such as medical codes, SWIFT BIC codes, and ACORD ICD codes. As with master data,
reference data is referenced in multiple places within business systems and in some cases, can
deviate across disparate systems. Reference data management software could be considered a
subset of master data management software and in many cases, may share the same code base as
master data management software sold by the same vendor.
Master data definition and control products can include operational orchestration facilities to coordinate
master data management processes across multiple information sources in either a batch, a service,
or an event-based context. Master data definition and control software provides capabilities to facilitate
single or multiple master data entity domain definition and processing and usually serves as the core
technical component to a broader master data management solution (a competitive market in the IDC
taxonomy).
Representative vendors and products include:

IBM (IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management)

Informatica (Multi-Domain MDM, PIM)

Oracle (Oracle Product Hub, Oracle Customer Hub, Oracle Site Hub, Oracle Higher Education
Constituent Hub, and Oracle Data Relationship Management)

SAP (SAP Master Data Governance)

TIBCO (Master Data Management Platform)
Metadata Management Software
Metadata is a data about data. It is commonly associated with unstructured data, as a structure in
which to describe the content. However, it is increasingly being used in the structured data world, as
the data becomes more complex in its definition, usage, and distribution across an enterprise. At a
basic level, metadata includes definitions of the data, when, how, and by whom the data was created
and last modified. More advanced metadata adds context to the data, traces lineage of the data, crossreferences where and how the data is used, and improves interoperability of the data. Metadata has
become critical in highly regulated industries as a useful source of compliance information.
The metadata management submarket has grown out of the database management, data integration,
and data modeling markets. Metadata management solutions provide the functionality to define
metadata schema, automated and/or manual population of the metadata values associated with
structured data, and basic analytic capabilities for quick reporting. These solutions also offer
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application program interfaces for programmatic access to metadata for data integration and
preparation for analytics.
Representative vendors and products include:

ASG (Rochade)

IBM (InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog)

Informatica (Metadata Manager and Business Glossary)

Oracle (Enterprise Metadata Management)

SAP (SAP Information Steward Metadata Management and Metapedia)
Self-Service Data Preparation Software
Self-service data preparation is an emerging segment in the data integration and integrity functional
market. Demand is coming from today's tech-savvy business users wanting access to their data in
increasingly complex environments, without IT getting in the way. IT has also been looking for
technology that can put data preparation capabilities into the hands of business users, where the
requirements and desires of analytic outcomes are best understood.
These solutions are targeted at business analysts, but some offer a range of user interfaces by
persona. Some require deeper levels of data analytics knowledge, and others require deeper levels of
data integration knowledge. Functionality ranges from cataloging data sets within repositories,
providing interactive capabilities for cleansing and standardizing data sets, joining disparate data sets,
performing calculations, and varying degrees of analytics for validation prior to visualization.
Software in this segment represents vendors that explicitly sell self-service data preparation
components. Business intelligence and analytics vendors that offer self-service data preparation
capability within a suite as part of the analytics process they support are excluded from this segment.
Representative vendors and products include:

Alteryx (Designer)

Datawatch (Monarch)

Paxata

SAP (Agile Data Preparation)

Talend (Data Preparation)

Trifacta (Wrangler)

Unifi
Application Development Software
The application development software markets include software, tools, and development environments
used by developers, business analysts, and other professionals to create both Web-based and
traditional applications. Development languages, environments, and tools; business rules engines; and
modeling and architecture tools (MATs) are included. Application development software also
encompasses markets pertaining to component-based development and includes the specific markets
discussed in the sections that follow.
Development Languages, Environments, and Tools
The development languages, environments, and tools market includes development-side tools such as
integrated development environments (IDEs) and code editors as well as programming language
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compilers and client-side, mobile, and embedded application development tools; runtimes; and
frameworks, including Web frameworks and browsers. Also included in this market are standalone
tools used during the code construction process such as debuggers and code profilers.
This market does not include tools whose primary function is to support formalized modeling and
business rules methodologies that assist in generating application requirements, data definitions, and
programming specifications. Server-side application platforms, including application servers and
mobile back-end services, are not tracked in this market.
The development languages, environments, and tools functional market includes:

IDEs. IDEs are the environments through which developers access the various tools available
to develop in any given language, or framework, or a combination thereof. IDEs are
increasingly multifaceted, encompassing multiple stages of the development and multiple
languages and tools to control them in one graphical user interface.

Compiled languages or 3GLs. Such compilers and associated tools (aka 3GL tools) typically
compile directly to machine or system process architecture languages in a distinct compilation
stage without an executable immediate language. Compiled languages encompass traditional
programming languages, such as C, C++, COBOL, and FORTRAN and include tools, such as
editors, linkers, optimizers, compilers, debuggers, and other language-specific tools used
primarily in the code-building process. C/C++, FORTRAN, Ada, and COBOL continue to be
the primary 3GL languages that developers use to produce business technology solutions,
although the group includes commercial proprietary languages like Delphi, academic
languages like Modula 2, and new languages like Erlang and Haskell. Compiled languages
may have interpreted varieties often used for prototyping or experimentation, but their design
center is primarily to produce efficient high-performance code through a compilation process.
The use of such relatively low-abstraction languages is increasingly found in commercial
applications where high performance and flexibility are weighted more heavily than developer
productivity or agility.

Managed languages. Managed languages are those that include higher levels of functionality
in their richer execution environment or runtime, such as type checking, error and exception
handling, and memory management services such as garbage collection. In most cases,
managed languages compile to intermediate languages (e.g., Java Bytecode or Microsoft's
Common Intermediate Language [CIL]), which permits the interoperability of different
languages layered on top of the bytecode virtual machine execution environment through the
sharing of a common lower-level infrastructure framework.

Web design and development tools. Web design and development tools provide Web site and
Web page layout and design, object integration for site and page development, and the tools
needed to create Web-based applications on both the client side and the server side including
the associated scripting and dynamic languages used for this purpose. Although HTML editing
is often provided, tools in this category typically offer visual abstraction away from HTML
through WYSIWYG page editors, animation and other rich media, JavaScript and/or VBScript
features, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), simple data integration, and deployment
scenarios. This category includes all execution environments inside of browsers and browser
extension languages and execution environments like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. In
addition, tools designed to address mashups and compositional user interface configurations
are included in this category.

Client-side model-driven tools. These tools, also known as rapid application development
(RAD) tools, are higher-level integrated authoring and execution environments used by
professional programmers or business analysts to build business applications. Such tools
typically provide a higher level of abstraction than a 3GL. The focus of such client application
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platforms is often development productivity and agility and involves a trade-off between
support for industry-standard and proprietary approaches to achieve these results. This
category is focused on client-side and mobile technologies, though it may also include
integrated end-to-end development targeting both client and server execution. Similar modeldriven tools, which focus exclusively on back-end application platforms and authoring tools,
are counted elsewhere in the taxonomy.

Server-side scripting and interpreted languages. This category aggregates server-side
languages and frameworks such as Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Node On Rails, which use
interpretation or virtual machine technology. The category is a catchall for the varied
programming language environments available today — not described previously. The majority
of such tools are considered parts of the broader Web tools ecosystem, with many being open
source based. The use of such tools can be compositional in nature or as a glue for IT
automation or for the construction of larger pieces of code forming a major chunk of some
applications.
The following are representative vendors and products in the development languages, environments,
and tools market:

Adobe (AIR, Flash, and Flex)

Embarcadero (JBuilder)

Four Js (Genero)

IBM (WebSphere Studio Developer)

Critical Path (OpenLaszlo)

Microsoft (Visual Studio.NET, Silverlight, SharePoint Designer, and ASP.NET)

Nexaweb (Enterprise Web 2.0)

TIBCO (General Interface)

Zend (Zend Studio)
Software Construction Components
Software construction components (SCCs) are functionally specific software subassemblies and
libraries sold apart from a programming development environment that may or may not be designed
for use with a specific programming development environment. Examples include class libraries,
frameworks, ActiveX controls, Java applets, JavaBeans, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), DLLs, and
other forms of API-specific libraries. Software components that fall into this category are intended to be
used by developers to assemble applications as opposed to fully functional applications that are
intended to run on their own. The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

GrapeCity (ComponentOne Studio Enterprise)

Developer Express (DXperience and DevExtreme)

Infragistics (.NET Controls)
Business Rules Management Systems
Business rules management systems (BRMSs) are defined as discrete systems that define, manage,
and execute conditional logic in concert with other IT processes and actions. BRMSs are well known
for their ability to automatically recognize the inter-rule relationships that evolve as rules are added or
changed, thereby eliminating the need for the careful and complex rule sequencing and conflict
resolution that would otherwise be necessary. The following are representative vendors and products
in this market:
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
CA Technologies (CA Aion)

Progress Software (Corticon BRMS)

FICO (Blaze Advisor)

IBM (ILOG JRules)

Pegasystems (PegaRULES)
Modeling and Architecture Tools
Modeling and architecture tools software includes those tools that support the design and analysis of
applications and systems that reside in the IT domain. These tools may also define information
regarding an organization's business architecture or leverage functional requirements to provide a
context for the design and analysis of IT applications and systems. A fundamental characteristic of
MATs is their internal support for objects, relationship, and patterns. This enables an architectural tool
to convey an accurate and consistent understanding of IT assets from current, future, and differential
perspectives.
The MAT market includes the submarkets discussed in the sections that follow.
Object Modeling Tools
Object modeling (OM) tools address application design largely using UML notation. The primary use
cases for these tools are enterprise application development or real-time and embedded system
development. Representative vendors and products include:

Atego (Artisan Studio)

IBM (Rational Software Architect and IBM Rhapsody)
Business Process Modeling Tools
Business process modeling (BPM) tools address process model and/or event-driven model design
largely using business process modeling notation (BPMN) and other process or event-oriented
notations. Representative vendors and products include:

MEGA (MEGA Process)

Software AG (ARIS)
Enterprise Architecture Tools
Enterprise architecture (EA) tools support the definition and alignment of an organization's business
architecture, application architecture, information architecture, and technical architecture.
Representative vendors and products include:

Troux (Troux)

MooD International (MooD Platform)
Quality and Life-Cycle Tools
Quality and life-cycle tools support the process of software development and deployment. This
category includes the specific markets discussed in the sections that follow.
Automated Software Quality Tools
Automated software quality (ASQ) tools support software unit testing, system testing, user integration
testing, and software quality assurance. Functions such as test specification, generation, execution,
results analysis, "bug tracking," test data and QA management, functional/regression, and stress and
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load testing are included in this category. ASQ SaaS and testing in the cloud and of cloud applications
(private, public, and hybrid), virtual test lab management, and service virtualization as well as software
quality analysis and measurement are included in this category. Emerging platform and software
testing support for mobile, video, crowdsourcing, end-user experience, embedded software quality,
and other areas (e.g., enterprise resource planning [ERP], mainframe) are also included. The software
quality analysis and measurement aspect of ASQ consists of software tools that enable organizations
to observe, measure, and evaluate software complexity, size, productivity, and risk. Examples of
capabilities provided by these software analysis tools include architectural assessment of design
consequences (on software performance, stability, adaptability, and maintainability), static analysis,
dynamic analysis, and quality metrics for complexity, size, risk, and productivity to establish baselines
and help judge project progress and resource capabilities.
The following are representative vendors and sample products in this market:

Compuware (Gomez Web Load Testing, Gomez Cross-Browser Testing, Gomez Render
Inspector, Dynatrace Purepath, Xpediter, Hiperstation, and DevEnterprise)

Coverity (acquired by Synopsys 1Q14)

HPE (HPE Quality Center, HPE Performance Center, HPE Test Data Management, and HPE
Fortify 360)

IBM (Rational Functional Tester, Rational GreenHat, AppScan, Rational Performance Tester,
Rational Robot, and Rational PurifyPlus)

Micro Focus (Silk Test, Silk Performer, and Silk Central Test Manager)

Perfecto Mobile

SOASTA
Software Change, Configuration, and Process Management
Software change, configuration, and process management (SCCPM) tools are used by application
development organizations to provide software revision control, versioning, and change and software
configuration management. IDC's broader SCCPM functional category encompasses additional
capabilities such as process management; requirements visualization; definition and management;
distributed, continuous team development support; and deployment orchestration (solutions managing
the software release handoff from development to deployment). SCCPM also includes methodologies
and related solutions, such as Agile (Scrum, Kanban, etc.), SEI's CMMI, agile project management,
and code management automation, as well as management of open source software as part of
complex sourcing of applications. Code management also demands end-to-end deployment strategies
that encompass the handoff from development to operations as described by the term DevOps.
Release management capabilities to automate and facilitate that process are also included in this
category.
The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Atlassian (JIRA, JIRA Agile)

Black Duck

CA Technologies (Endevor, Software Change Manager, and Nolio)

IBM Rational (ClearCase, ClearQuest, Method Composer, DOORS, and UrbanCode)

iRise

Microsoft (Visual SourceSafe and Visual Studio)

Rally Software
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
Serena (ChangeMan and TeamTrack)
Software license life-cycle management is a submarket of the SCCPM functional market. Capabilities
include:

Entitle management: This phase involves the identification and authorization of transactions
involving the software SKU.

Delivery: This phase includes "fulfillment" of the software and a "right to use" license.

Installation: This phase includes the installation and reporting of software added to any type of
computing device.

Control: Incorporating the elements of discovery/inventory and software metering, this phase
represents the control and compliance phase, including identifying and managing software
license assets.
Vendor examples for this submarket include Flexera and SafeNet.
Application Platforms
The application platform secondary market includes technologies that present a cohesive application
execution environment for applications built on a server or back-end component. Application platforms
are back-end server middleware that execute application logic; mediate access to data, content
sources, and Web services; coordinate authentication; manage sessions; and provide quality of
service (QoS) to offer scalability, performance, reliability, and availability to applications executed and
managed by the platform.
Applications built on modern application server middleware are used over TCP/IP networks and are
built using standard frameworks, such as Java Enterprise Edition (JEE),.NET, and Spring. Older
legacy application server middleware is deployed on mainframes.
Application platforms were formerly called application server middleware. In this change, we are
calling out are three types of application platforms:

Deployment-centric application platforms (DCAPs)

Model-driven application platforms

Transaction processing monitors (TPMs)
Deployment-Centric Application Platforms
Deployment-centric application platforms are on-premise and cloud middleware that host application
logic and provide common services that allow the application to operate effectively.
By using DCAPs, developers gain access to extensions that include connectivity between the
presentation layer, middleware services, data sources, and infrastructure. These platforms also
coordinate and manage access to third-party services via APIs, and they also offer a range of QoS
capabilities, including transaction processing reliability, availability, throughput, scalability, security,
and management.
DCAPs use common programming models, such as JEE,.NET, Ruby on Rails, and Spring, that
developers use to build their applications. They may also provide a language-specific framework, such
as PHP or Ruby, for communicating between the front-end, back-end, and data sources. DCAPs also
include containerization technology for process isolation.
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DCAPs are used by ISVs to build and deploy applications sold separately and by enterprises for
custom development and to deploy packaged applications. Many vendors build commercial software
on top of this category of software and sell the product as a new category. For example, when a portal
is built on an application server but sold as a portal, the application server software portion is not
counted in this market. However, when an ERP is purchased separately from the application server
required to make it run, the application server revenue is counted.
Where the DCAP is part of a multipurpose product, such as Microsoft Windows Server, and we can
determine what portion of the software is used as an application server software platform (ASSP), we
will include that portion in ASSP revenue.
The DCAP market includes software deployed on-premise as well as in public and private cloud
settings supporting Web and mobile applications' front ends.
Within DCAPs, there are three basic categories: application server software platforms, mobile back
end as a service (MBaaS), and deployment-centric application platform as a service.
Application Server Software Platforms
Application server software platforms are traditionally used to run custom and packaged apps in
datacenters. The following list is representative of the vendors and products we follow in this market:

IBM WebSphere Application Server

IBM Liberty Buildpack on Bluemix

Microsoft Windows Server Internet Information Services

Oracle WebLogic Server

Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Server

EMC Pivotal tc Server
Deployment-Centric Application Platform as a Service
This category consists of deployment-oriented platforms operating in public and private clouds. The
following list is representative of the vendors and products we follow in this market:

ActiveState Stackato

Apprenda Platform

Docker

Engine Yard Cloud

Google App Engine

Microsoft Azure

EMC Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Red Hat OpenShift

Salesforce.com Heroku Cloud Application Platform
Mobile Back End as a Service
Mobile back end as a service (MBaaS) consists of deployment-oriented platforms operating in public
and private clouds that coordinate with mobile front ends as well as third-party application, cloud
infrastructure, and data and middleware services through APIs. The following list is representative of
the vendors and products we follow in this market:
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
Backendless

Buddy Platform

FatFractal

FeedHenry

Kinvey
Model-Driven Application Platforms
Model-driven application platforms combine development and runtime into a single offering. They
typically consist of graphical modeling environments and point-and-click configurations as well as
relatively simple scripting. These environments are popular for rapid development as well as
development teams that include both business participants and developers.
Data-Centric Application Platforms
These model-driven application platforms tools, also known as data or RAD tools or 4GLs, are higherlevel integrated authoring and execution environments used by professional programmers or business
analysts to build business applications. The focus of such application platforms is often development
productivity and agility and involves a trade-off between support for industry-standard and proprietary
approaches to achieve these results. This category is focused on server or back-end technologies.
Similar model-driven tools, which include integrated front-end application platforms and authoring
tools, are counted elsewhere in the taxonomy.
The following list is representative of the vendors and products we follow in this market:

Asteor Software Techcello

Caspio

Intuit QuickBase

Mendix

OrangeScape

OutSystems Platform

Progress Pacific (Rollbase)

salesforce.com Force

Servoy Business Application Platform

TrackVia
Process-Centric Application Platforms
A process is the series of activities that accomplish work in a routine way. Process-centric application
platforms are used by enterprises and ISVs to develop and execute custom process workflows and
automation. Process-centric application platforms automate people-oriented activities that require
manual steps or human decision making, such as loan approvals or bringing new employees onboard.
They also support system-to-system activities that are part of the process.
BP platforms are sophisticated products and portfolios of offerings that provide enterprises with
capabilities to support strategic process improvement initiatives. Process automation involves human
task and system-to-system automation as well as management of cases. It increasingly involves
automated opportunity and problem detection and coordination across larger end-to-end processes
spanning multiple applications inside a single enterprise datacenter, across datacenters, in the cloud,
and with business partners. These platforms also coordinate and manage cross-border processes
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(multiple languages and time zones) and complex integration scenarios that may involve legacy
custom or packaged applications, a variety of data sources, and/or Web services.
BPM suites include capabilities that are optimized for human-centric workflow, ad hoc requirements,
and worker adaptability. These are primarily used to improve worker productivity and operational
efficiency, supporting individual worker and collaboration-based processes. The focus is on
business/developer partnership in development and an effort to minimize the need to use developers
to make minor changes and tweaks to the process in runtime. BPM suites are optimized for rapid
development, and many elements are straightforward enough for business analysts to play a
meaningful role as a member of the development team. BPM suites are able to support departmental,
matrixed, and team projects as well as process automation for small and midsize businesses.
Enterprises that adopt a BPM suite are able to use the product broadly and repeatedly across the
organization, particularly for bottom-up improvements in efficiency and productivity. Because there are
so many of these types of projects across organizations, enterprises that invest and learn how to
improve productivity at the smallest team unit through horizontal processes will improve overall
profitability — one project at a time.
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This category of software was previously covered in process automation middleware. That term is now
obsolete. The following are representative vendors and products in process-centric application
platforms:

Appian Enterprise BPMS and Appian Cloud

AuraPortal BPMS

Bizagi Suite

IBM Business Process Manager

K2 Platform

Nintex Workflow 2010

OpenText Process Suite

Oracle Business Process Management Suite

Pegasystems Pega 7

PNMsoft BPM

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM

SAP Process Orchestration
Transaction Processing Monitors
Transaction processing monitors mediate and optimize transaction processing between clients and a
mainframe database. TPMs have evolved to the point where they currently can act as application
servers for legacy mainframe and client/server applications. The following are representative vendors
and products in this category:

IBM CICS

Oracle Tuxedo
Integration and Orchestration Middleware
The integration and orchestration middleware markets include tools used by developers and business
analysts to integrate applications, exchange business transactions between enterprises, transfer files
inside and outside organizations, publish and process events, and monitor the business and process
performance of these applications and automated processes.
This middleware is deployed on-premise as software implemented on servers, in appliances, and as
public and hybrid cloud offerings.
In the IDC taxonomy, there are four specific types of integration and orchestration middleware, along
with an "other" category that includes legacy software and integration-related middleware not yet large
enough to be categorized in a standalone market:

Business-to-business middleware

Integration middleware

Event-driven middleware

Managed file transfer software
Business-to-Business Middleware
B2B middleware consists of software and services used to receive, route, and convert standardsbased structured interenterprise files and messages related to transactions. Those standards can be
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community-based standards built around electronic data interchange, such as X12 or HIPAA 5010, or
between party-agreed-upon formats.
B2B Gateway Middleware
B2B gateway middleware is software deployed on-premise used to automate and monitor the
interenterprise exchange of data. At the heart of these platforms are conversion, translation, and data
exchange–related orchestration capabilities. Additional features include:

More generalized process automation

Receipt and delivery of messages

Connectivity software

Business activity monitoring (BAM)

Reporting

Development environment
There are strong similarities between B2B gateway platforms and other types of integration
middleware. However, the strength of these platforms is in the embedded support of common-standard
industry models for electronic message exchange, such as electronic data interchange. In addition,
they are optimized to operate at the edge between two or more enterprises, including the ability to
send acknowledgements to senders once a message is received. The following are representative
vendors and products in this category:

Axway Business Integration Network

IBM B2B Integrator

Informatica B2B Data Exchange

SEEBURGER Business Integration Server

Software AG webMethods Trading Networks

TIBCO B2B Gateway
B2B Networks and B2B Managed Services
B2B networks are secure, private networks that receive, store, and forward structured interenterprise
messages related to transactions. B2B networks include customizable hosted solutions and SaaS
offerings. Many of the vendors in this category also offer end-to-end managed services.
B2B networks broadly support EDI-based standards across industries. Beyond reliable, secure
delivery of messages, features include protocol conversion, message and file translation, monitoring,
exception reporting, paper-to-digital conversion, and partner self-service, including Web forms for
submitting transactions and documents and self-testing capabilities. The following are representative
vendors and products in this category:

OpenText's Easylink Data Messaging

GXS Trading Grid

IBM Collaboration Network

SPS Commerce Trading Partner Integration Center

SWIFT SWIFTnet FIN and InterAct
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Integration Middleware
Integration middleware is server software or appliances installed on-premise inside a datacenter or
offered in a public or private cloud to integrate applications. Integration middleware supports passing
data through a Web service or receiving data by calling a Web service. Integration handles
normalization and transformation to ensure an application is able to send or receive data in the correct
format. Integration also handles orchestration needed to hand off data for data quality or pass to one or
more applications.
API Management Software
API management software and cloud services support the secure and scalable publishing and
management of application programming interfaces. This software helps API publishers design,
monitor, manage, and update APIs and scale access to the services that connect to the APIs.
Representative vendors and products include the following:

Apigee Enterprise API Management

Axway API Management

CA Layer 7

IBM API Management

Intel Mashery

MuleSoft API Manager

SOA Software (now known as Akana) API Management

TIBCO API Exchange
Enterprise Service Bus Middleware
Enterprise service bus (ESB) was created to support application integration for applications built on a
standards-based service-oriented architecture. ESBs operate in request-response and event-driven
paradigms. Under the more common request-response model, ESBs receive service consumption
requests, route the requests to the correct service provider, transform the requests to a format
compatible with the service provider, wait for the results, and deliver them back to the service
consumer.
In an event-driven model, ESBs receive an event, transform it, and forward it, based on routing
instructions managed within the ESB.
There are many types of ESBs in the market, with orientations based on the preexisting middleware
that was used as the basis for the ESB. In addition, there are some ESBs that were built from the
ground up to provide services-oriented routing and transformation capabilities. Representative vendors
and products include the following:

IBM Integration Bus

Oracle SOA Suite

Red Hat JBoss Fuse Service Works

SAP NetWeaver Process Integrator

Software AG webMethods Integration Server

TIBCO BusinessWorks
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Connectivity Middleware
Connectivity middleware is installed on end systems to send and receive data and instructions directly
from other systems and via middleware. Depending on how it is deployed, connectivity middleware —
adapters and sensors — can perform transformations prior to delivering the data back to the targeted
system or can transfer as is.
There are different deployment paradigms for the adapters. They can fetch or deliver data on request.
They can be set up to look for new data on a scheduled basis. They can also support an event model
in which a data change is automatically captured by an adapter, which generates a message that is
published to message-oriented middleware (MOM).
Most deployment platform vendors have their own collection of standard or common adapters. They
tend to be bundled into the price of platform software and, therefore, are not counted in this category.
This category includes the standalone purchase of connectivity middleware. Representative vendors
and products include the following:

Information Builders iWay Universal Adapter Suite

Software AG webMethods Adapters

TIBCO adapters
Event-Driven Middleware
Event-driven middleware is used to detect events and automatically pass them to applications, systems,
and people. An event is a data or application change of state. The technologies that make up eventdriven middleware are key components of an event-driven infrastructure, which is implemented to:

Predict and detect problems or opportunities at the earliest possible moment they are
identifiable.

Support automated processes to reduce cycle times and remove waste, errors, and
redundancy from an enterprise's operations.

Improve the scalability and processing speeds of applications and application infrastructure.
Event-driven middleware consists of the following three types of software: message-oriented
middleware, complex event processing (CEP) software, and business activity monitoring.
In essence, MOM can be considered the nervous system that listens for stimuli and informs the brain.
CEP is the brain, which contains the short-term memory and executive decision-making ability to send
instructions through the nervous system to the appropriate parts of the body. BAM is the eyes of an
event-driven infrastructure.
Business Activity Monitoring
Business activity monitoring informs users about the current status of areas in which they are
interested and notifies them when thresholds are crossed that warrant attention. BAM typically is
deployed as a continuously updated dashboard of key performance indicators that describe the
metrics that are important to an individual user. There are a variety of graphical displays in which the
KPIs are embedded, including standard graphs, heat maps, and process model views. There are also
graphical indicators of current performance.
While BAM dashboards are typically presented in a portal, notification of out-of-bounds performance is
sent out via email. In some cases, vendors are taking KPIs and their associated graphical
representations and making them available as gadgets that can be displayed in a mashup.
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BAM is implemented in many scenarios. In this case, we count BAM products sold as a standalone
offering, which excludes the embedded BAM sold as part of a BPM suite. The following are
representative vendors and products in this category:

Oracle BAM

Software AG Optimizer

Axway Systar
Complex Event Processing Middleware
CEP middleware manages descriptions of conditions and their state, correlates new events to the
conditions, and tests for matches. Once matched, a new event is created and fired off to other systems
listening for the event. CEP is used primarily as infrastructure for temporal (time) and spatial (location)
applications.
A condition describes the relationship of two or more events to each other. These can be simple, such
as calculating the impact of a change in stock price over a set time window to see whether it meets a
certain threshold, or complicated, such as calculating the impact of a flight delay on all of the systems
affected by that delay.
CEP products are based on different technologies, with the three most common being:

Continuous query software that automatically runs SQL or SQL-like queries upon the receipt of
new data

Rules engines that apply new data to all the rules and rule relationships

Software that allows users to model the condition
The following are representative vendors and products in this category:

Amazon AWS Kinesis Streams

EsperTech Esper and NEsper

IBM InfoSphere Streams

Informatica RulePoint

SAS ESP

Software AG Apama

TIBCO StreamBase Server

TIBCO BusinessEvents
Message-Oriented Middleware
When a relevant event occurs, MOM creates a structured message containing the data of the event,
the time the event was created, and the metadata about the event. MOM delivers the message in the
following paradigms:

Point to point, where one sending system publishes a message directly to a receiving system
for processing

To a queue, where the message can be picked up for processing by any authorized system

Publish and subscribe, which broadcasts messages without concern for whether the event is
actually received by any system
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In the latter two paradigms, each message includes metadata that describes the topic or the subject of
the message. Subscribers listening for that topic receive all messages that are broadcast out. When a
system picks messages off of a queue, it also looks for specific message types, based on the metadata.
MOM is also capable of transforming a message to a structure that is compatible with the receiving
system. Whether the transformation is handled within MOM or by other integration middleware, such
as an ESB, is an architectural decision made by the enterprise during system design.
Although many vendors offer commodity MOM based on the Java Message Service (JMS) standard,
the standalone offerings differentiate and compete on low latency, reliability, and high throughput. The
following are representative vendors and products in this category:

IBM WebSphere MQ and Message Hub

Informatica Ultra Messaging

Real-Time Innovations (RTI) Connext

Splunk App for Stream

TIBCO (Rendezvous, Enterprise Message Service, FTL)
Managed File Transfer Software
Managed file transfer software provides secure, guaranteed high-speed delivery of a file over a network.
The file transfer can be from one enterprise to another or within an enterprise, across datacenters, or
systems. This software includes the free software that delivers files over file transfer protocol (FTP)
and commercial software that offers better security, reliability, and speeds. Examples include:

Accellion

Aspera

Attunity MFT

Axway MFT

CA Technologies XCOM

Data Expedition

Globalscape

IBM Sterling Control Center

TIBCO MFT
Data Access, Analysis, and Delivery Software
Data access, analysis, and delivery products are end-user–oriented tools for ad hoc data access,
analysis, and reporting as well as production reporting. Products in this category are most commonly
used by information consumers or power users rather than by professional programmers. Examples
include query, reporting, multidimensional analysis, and data mining and statistics tools. The data
access, analysis, and delivery markets are defined in the sections that follow.
End-User Query, Reporting, and Analysis
Query, reporting, and analysis software includes ad hoc query and multidimensional analysis tools as
well as dashboards, data visualization, and production reporting tools. Query and reporting tools are
designed specifically to support ad hoc data access and report building by either IT or business users.
This category does not include other application development tools that may be used for building
reports but are not specifically designed for that purpose. Multidimensional analysis tools include both
server- and client-side analysis tools that provide a data management environment used for modeling
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business problems and analyzing business data. Packaged data marts, which are preconfigured
software combining data transformation, management, and access in a single package, usually with
business models, are also included in this functional market. The following are representative vendors
and products in this market:

Actuate (Actuate BIRT)

IBM (IBM Cognos Business Intelligence)

Information Builders (WebFOCUS)

Microsoft (Microsoft SQL Server Reporting and Analysis Services)

MicroStrategy (MicroStrategy 9)

Oracle (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition)

QlikTech (QlikView)

SAP (SAP BusinessObjects)

Tableau Software (Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server)

TIBCO (TIBCO Spotfire and TIBCO Jaspersoft)
Advanced and Predictive Analytics Software
Advanced and predictive analytics software includes data mining and statistical software. It uses a
range of techniques to create, test, and execute statistical models. Some techniques used are
machine learning, regression, neural networks, rule induction, and clustering. Advanced and predictive
analytics are used to discover relationships in data and make predictions that are hidden, not
apparent, or too complex to be extracted using query, reporting, and multidimensional analysis
software. Products on the market vary in scope. Some products include their own programming
language and algorithms for building models, but other products include scoring engines and model
management features that can execute models built using proprietary or open source modeling
languages. The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

SAS (SAS Analytics and SAS Enterprise Miner)

IBM (IBM SPSS Predictive Analytics Software)

FICO (FICO Model Builder)

SAP (SAP Predictive Analytics and SAP Infinite Insight)

Oracle (Oracle Data Mining)

TIBCO (TIBCO Spotfire S+)

Dell (StatSoft)

Revolution Analytics (Revolution R Enterprise)

RapidMiner (RapidMiner Server)

Predixion Software (Predixion Insight)

Blue Yonder (Forward Demand)
Spatial Information Management Software
Spatial information management (SIM) software (also called geographic information system [GIS])
includes tools for data entry/conversion (surveying/COGO, aerial photo rectification, remote sensing,
GPS, and others), mapping/spatial query, and business analysis. The following are representative
vendors and products in this market:

Autodesk (Autodesk Map)
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
Esri (ArcInfo)

Hexagon (Intergraph GeoMedia)
System Infrastructure Software Market Definitions
System infrastructure software includes software and SaaS solutions that provide both the basic
foundational layers of software that enable bare metal infrastructure hardware resources to host
higher-level application development and deployment software and application software and the
virtualization and management software used to configure, control, automate, and share use of those
resources across heterogeneous applications and user groups. System infrastructure software
includes five groups of infrastructure software products — system management software, network
software, security software, storage software, and system software. These five secondary markets are
discussed in the sections that follow.
System Management Software
System management software and SaaS services are used to manage all the computing resources for
the end user, small business, workgroup, or enterprise, including physical and virtual systems,
middleware, applications, cloud services, desktop, and client and endpoint devices. This market does
not include storage management or network management software. System management software is
further segmented into the categories discussed in the sections that follow.
IT Event and Log Management Tools
IT event and log management software automates the analysis and response of the systems to
nonscheduled system and application events and root cause analysis. Included are console
automation products, global event management applications, event correlation and root cause analysis
software, event action engines, log management, and log analytics. This category does not include
automation of responses to scheduled events. The following are representative vendors and products
in this market:

BMC TrueSight Operations Management (portions thereof) and BMC TrueSight Intelligence

Oracle Management Cloud (portions thereof)

HPE Operations Analytics (portions thereof)

IBM Operations Analytics — Log Analysis and IBM Tivoli Netcool (portions thereof)

Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud

VMware vRealize Operations (portions thereof)

Microsoft Operations Management Suite (portions thereof)
Workload Scheduling and Automation Software
Workload scheduling and automation software manages the provisioning, placement, migration, and
execution flow of workloads on systems and the provisioning, scaling, and management orchestration
of images, operating systems (OSs), containers, and applications onto physical and virtual servers. It
also includes service brokering, optimization, and self-service provisioning solutions used to enable
cloud and software-defined datacenter systems and applications management. The worldwide
workload scheduling and automation software market is made up of two submarkets — workload
management (formerly called job scheduling) and datacenter operations automation — as defined in
the sections that follow.
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Workload Management
Workload management includes software tools that manage the execution flow of workloads and
applications on systems using calendar or other fixed-schedule metrics as well as event-driven triggers
such as file events or completion of jobs. It also includes process automation, orchestration, and selfservice tools specifically for job scheduling, workload management, and workload process
orchestration. This market is limited to tools that work at the application level rather than the system
level. It does not include workload-balancing applications that work at the system level (e.g., highavailability software). It encompasses both mainframe and distributed platforms.
The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

BMC Control-M

CA Technologies Workload Automation Suite

IBM Workload Automation

Hitachi JP1
Datacenter Operations Automation
Datacenter operations automation includes software running on distributed, non–mainframe platforms
that enables dynamic automated physical and virtual server and application provisioning, workload and
VM allocation and reclamation, self-service cloud provisioning portals and cloud service brokers,
runbook automation, workflow orchestration, and software-defined datacenter and hybrid cloud
resource optimization and provisioning including container management and orchestration.
Configuration automation solutions, both proprietary and commercial open source, are also included.
Task-level automation capabilities included in software that is primarily focused on asset discovery,
software license management, and software distribution are not included here as they are part of the
change and configuration management software market. Task-level automation capabilities included in
software that is primarily focused on service desk operations are not included here as they are part of
the problem management software market.
The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

BMC BladeLogic Automation Suite, Atrium Orchestrator, and Cloud Lifecycle Management

Chef

Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite (portions thereof)

Docker DataCenter Universal Control Plane (Docker Swarm) (portions thereof)

Google Container Engine (Kubernetes)

HPE Operations Orchestration, Server Automation, and Cloud Service Automation

IBM Cloud Orchestrator

Puppet

Red Hat CloudForms and Ansible

ServiceNow Cloud Management

VMware vRealize Automation
Output Management Tools
Output management tools automate the operation, control, administration, tracking, and delivery of
print and digital information within an organization. This market encompasses three submarkets:
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
Device management

Print management

Enterprise output management
It is important to note that many vendors (including those listed as representatives in the following
submarkets) offer suites of solutions that include software in several, or all, of these submarkets.
Device Management
Device management tools are software-based solutions designed to install, activate, configure,
monitor, and control office-imaging equipment deployed as part of a networked fleet of devices. This
includes monitoring of supplies and end-user authorization to use the device. The solutions can be
delivered as either hardware-embedded, on-premise, or cloud-based applications. These solutions are
primarily aimed at reducing costs by providing greater control of hardcopy output infrastructure and
visibility into print volume and print spend. Representative vendors and products in this submarket are:

HP (Web Jetadmin)

Netaphor (SiteAudit)

PrintFleet

Print Audit
Print Management
Print management tools are software-based solutions for tracking, measuring, monitoring, reporting,
and managing end-user behavior and the printed output produced by an office-imaging equipment
deployed as part of a networked fleet of devices. Functionality includes, but is not limited to, rulesbased printing, secure print release, and job auditing and accounting.
This segment additionally includes mobile printing solutions that deliver print jobs from a mobile touch
point (smartphones or tablets) to an output device using cloud (external) or internally hosted server.
These tools include both secure enterprise (behind the firewall) deployments and public (cloud)
printing solutions. Direct peer-to-peer print (e.g., AirPrint) or direct wireless print is excluded. Pages
are tracked in the same manner as if jobs were initiated from a PC or laptop (and may be managed by
the toolset previously described).
In addition to cost reduction, these tools are primarily aimed at optimizing device usage, increasing
productivity, improving device and content security, and helping meet sustainability goals.
Representative vendors and products in this submarket are:

Canon (uniFLOW)

Nuance (Equitrac and SafeCom)

Pharos (Blueprint)

PaperCut

YSoft (SafeQ)
Enterprise Output Management
Enterprise output management is software that automates the production, distribution, and
management of output streams from enterprise or desktop applications to any physical or virtual output
channel. Functionality includes, but is not limited to, data transformation, format conversion, print
server elimination, application integration, and multichannel delivery. Included are fax servers and
other applications that manage the dissemination of output. The term output includes not only
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hardcopy devices such as multifunction peripherals (MFPs), printers, and fax machines but also digital
destinations such as email, Web pages, and other digital channels. This category does not include
workflow applications or packaged online viewing applications for specific vertical industries.
Representative vendors and products in this submarket are:

CA Technologies (Dispatch)

LRS Dynamic Report System, VPSX

Plus Technologies (OM Plus)

HP (Output Server)

Ricoh (InfoPrint Manager)

Nuance (Output Manager)
Performance Management Software
Performance management software is used for compute infrastructure and application performance
monitoring, performance data collection, performance tracking, forecasting, capacity and performance
analysis, simulation and planning software, predictive analytics, and business performance impact
analysis enabled by IT and APM performance data. It also includes service-level management
software when applied to systems and applications including mobile devices, mobile applications, and
public and hybrid cloud services. Resource accounting software for resource utilization tracking and
reporting and IS-specific financial management and planning is also included. The following are
representative vendors and products in this market:

AppDynamics

BMC TrueSight Capacity Optimization, TrueSight Operations Management (portions thereof),
and MainView

CA Technologies CA Application Performance Manager and CA Unified Infrastructure
Management

Compuware Strobe

Dynatrace Application Monitoring, User Experience Management, and Synthetic Monitoring

HPE AppPulse

IBM APM

New Relic

Microsoft System Center (Operations Manager module)

VMware vRealize Business and vRealize Operations (portions thereof)
Change and Configuration Management Software
Change and configuration management software provides change, configuration, compliance and
asset tracking for physical and virtual systems, application software containers, cloud infrastructure
and services and client, desktop, mobile devices, and peripheral hardware and software assets but not
network devices. Software for planning, tracking, and applying system hardware and software changes
is also included, as is software distribution, hardware and software discovery and inventory, CMDBs,
license management, settings and state management, and auditing. The following are representative
vendors and products in this market:

BMC Discovery (formerly ADDM), IT Asset Management, and BMC FootPrints

Dell KACE

HPE Asset Manager
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
IBM Endpoint Manager

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager and Virtual Machine Manager

VMware vCenter Server

Red Hat Satellite

SAP IT Infrastructure Management and Landscape Virtualization Management
Problem Management Software
Problem management software tracks, records, and manages problems related to IT end users,
devices, infrastructure, and operations. This category includes IT help desk applications and related
problem determination and resolution applications, including knowledge bases. This category is
separate from externally focused problem resolutions solutions within customer relationship
management. To the extent that IT infrastructure library (ITIL) and IT service management–based
solutions help in the resolution of problems as well as preventative activities such as root cause
analysis, those functions are included here as well. The following are representative vendors and
products in this market:

BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite

CA Technologies — CA Service Desk Manager and CA Cloud Service Management

HPE Service Manager and HPE Service Anywhere

IBM Control Desk (portions thereof)

Cherwell Software

ServiceNow IT Service Management
Network Software
The network software market includes a broad set of networking and communications technologies
that are deployed across enterprise, cloud provider, and communication service provider (CSP)
domains. These encompass the products and technologies that are primarily deployed to build and
support local area or wide area networks for established and emerging applications including voice
and video, across enterprise/private and public, and fixed and mobile networks. Network software is a
secondary market that includes two functional markets:

Network infrastructure software (NIS)

Network management software
Network Infrastructure Software
Network infrastructure software encompasses software that enables virtualized networking,
optimization, orchestration, and related network infrastructure functions across enterprise, datacenter,
and communication service provider networks. This software can be an alternate deployment model
running on commodity hardware while providing networking and/or communications functionality. It
may work at any or all layers of the network stack and can include data plane software and control
plane software, as well as the broad areas of network virtualization across all types of enterprise and
service provider networks.
As networking technologies transition into software-based architectural approaches that encompass
software-defined networks (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV), the networking software
used for such a deployment is included here. However, this designation also includes network software
that may or may not be used in a SDN- or NFV-type deployment.
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Within NIS, IDC plans to track three submarkets as the market and technology domains evolve:

Network application delivery, including the application delivery controller (ADC) and WAN
optimization markets, with vendors such as F5 (Big-IP), Citrix (Netscaler), Riverbed
(SteelHead), Silver Peak (VX/VRX), Cisco (WaaS), and Radware (vADC)

Software-defined networks, including the network virtualization, SDN controller, and network
services markets, with vendors such as Cisco (ACI), VMware (NSX), Juniper (Contrail),
Brocade (Vyatta), and Alcatel-Lucent (Nuage VSP)

Telecom equipment provider NIS, including the traditional CSP equipment domains with
vendors such as Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, Oracle, and Alcatel-Lucent
The first submarket, network app delivery, has already been tracked and reported within IDC's
Software Tracker. We are now commencing tracking of the second submarket, namely the network
virtualization and SDN controller market, as illustrated by some of the vendors/solutions highlighted in
the aforementioned list. IDC will continue to watch the third submarket closely, building revenue
models gradually, with the aim of reporting on these segments when there is sufficient and credible
data.
Network Application Delivery Software
The application delivery market is made up of two markets: the application delivery controller (ADC)
market, also known as the Layer 4–7 switching market and the WAN optimization market. The products
and the suppliers in the space have contributed to the increasing business relevance of the network,
with ADCs ensuring the availability, performance, reliability, and security of application workloads in
the datacenter and WAN optimization, ensuring the delivery of applications from the datacenter to
branch offices, to remote users, and to other datacenters.
Broadly speaking, these networking software products make intelligent decisions regarding the
effective and optimized delivery of applications for enterprise customers and service providers. Key
among the products' priorities is the need to provide a secure, reliable architecture to enterprise
applications and, in many instances, Web applications, but in all instances, to applications that are
running over TCP/IP. They enable network policies specific to the applications running on the network,
and they operate in a class of products known as network and security services, meaning that like a
variety of security products, they reside at Layers 4–7 of the OSI protocol stack.
This product category, comprising ADCs and WAN optimization, provides a range of specific features
but generally works to enable customers to implement reliable, resilient network architectures that
provide essential network services to and support for business-critical client server, Web, and cloud
workloads. Although software (virtual appliances) is tracked here, these platforms are also available as
physical appliances — the full view is available in IDC's networking trackers/QViews.
Application Delivery Controllers
Also known as Layer 4–7 switches, ADCs make forwarding decisions based on packet information
contained in the upper layers of the OSI model, specifically the transport, session, presentation, and
application layers. An ADC can determine what type of user or device is requesting content and what
type of content is being requested and make traffic management decisions accordingly. Functionality
can include local and global load balancing, access control, bandwidth management, firewall load
balancing, secure sockets layer switching and offload, traffic prioritization, and URL and cookie
switching.
WAN Optimization
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The primary goal of WAN optimization products is to cost effectively enhance and optimize the delivery
of applications across the WAN, either from the datacenter to branch or remote offices or between
datacenters. WAN optimization products must have the following features to be included in the market:
compression of datastreams, the ability to monitor traffic flows, traffic prioritization, bandwidth
optimization, and caching.
Network Virtualization and SDN Controller Software
Network virtualization and SDN controller software comprises network virtualization overlays and SDN
controllers used in datacenter networks. Both overlays and controllers bring alternate SDN
architectures to the network, supporting multiple protocols and southbound/northbound
interfaces/APIs. Network virtualization overlays are logical, virtual networks that run over (on top of)
physical network infrastructure. SDN controller software also runs on top of physical network
infrastructure (residing between applications and the network), providing logically centralized network
control and a means for application policy to be enacted across the network. It can also facilitate
automated network management and networkwide visibility.
Examples of the platforms and solutions included in this submarket include:

Cisco (ACI), VMware (NSX)

Juniper (Contrail)

Brocade (Vyatta)

Alcatel-Lucent (Nuage VSP)

Midokura (Enterprise MidoNet)

PLUMgrid (ONS)

HPE (VAN)

NEC (ProgrammableFlow)
Network Management Software
Network management software includes solutions for managing the network components of enterprise
infrastructures. It includes two categories: network performance management and network operations
management. The products within network management often and increasingly will integrate with
cross-domain infrastructure management tools such as service desks, application management,
systems management, and business dashboards across multiple platforms and topologies, including
data, voice, video, traditional networks, and wireless networks. Network management includes
solutions that manage network availability by collecting and correlating events, service levels, alarms,
response times, and performance. It also includes network configuration management products that
manage, control, and audit changes to the network infrastructure. However, solutions solely for
network service providers are excluded.
Representative vendors include:

CA (Spectrum, Network Flow)

EMC (Service Assurance/NCM)

HPE (ANM, IMC)

IBM (Netcool)
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Security Software
The security software market includes a wide range of technologies used to improve the security of
computers, information systems, Internet communications, networks, and transactions. It is used for
confidentiality, integrity, privacy, and assurance. Through the use of security applications,
organizations can provide security management, access control, authentication, malware protection,
encryption, data loss prevention (DLP), intrusion detection and prevention, vulnerability assessment,
and perimeter defense. All these tools are designed to improve the security of an organization's
networking infrastructure and help advance value-added services and capabilities. Security software
includes traditional security software as well as security software-as-a-service offerings. The market
covers both corporate and consumer security software.
Security software is divided into seven specific functional markets — identity and access management
(IAM), endpoint security, messaging security, network security, Web security, security and vulnerability
management, and other security software. Each of these markets has additional submarkets.
Identity and Access Management
Identity and access management is a comprehensive set of solutions used to identify users
(employees, customers, contractors, and others) in an IT environment and control their access to
resources within that environment by associating user rights and restrictions with the established
identity and assigned user accounts. Subcategories of the IAM market include identity management
suites, user provisioning, privileged account management (PAM), cloud single sign-on (CSSO),
advanced authentication (software for both PKI and supporting personal portable security devices
such as smartcards and OTP tokens), and legacy authorization, such as RACF and ACF-2.
The following are representative vendors and products in the identity and access management market:

CA Technologies (CA SiteMinder, CA ControlMinder, and CA CloudMinder sets of products)

CyberArk (CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault and CyberArk Privileged Session Manager)

Dell (Dell Identity Manager, Dell One Identity Cloud Access Manager, and Dell Privileged
Password Manager)

IBM (IBM Security Identity and Access Manager, Tivoli Federated Identity Manager, and IBM
Security zSecure Admin)

Ping Identity (PingOne, PingFederate, and PingAccess)

RSA, the Security Division of EMC (RSA Identity Management and Governance, RSA Access
Management, and SecurID)
Endpoint Security
The endpoint security market covers both the corporate and the consumer segments. The market
includes client antimalware software, file/storage server antimalware, personal firewall software, host
intrusion prevention software, file/disk encryption, white listing, patch management desktop URL
filtering, and endpoint data loss prevention. Example vendors and products in this category include:

Bit9 (Security Platform)

ESET (ESET Endpoint Security and ESET Multi-Device Security)

Intel (McAfee Complete Endpoint Protection, McAfee SaaS Endpoint Protection Suite, and
McAfee Deep Defender)

Kaspersky Lab (Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business Advanced and Kaspersky PURE
Total Security)
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
Symantec (Norton 360, Symantec Endpoint Protection, and Symantec Endpoint Encryption)

Trend Micro (OfficeScan Deep Security and Titanium Internet Security)
Messaging Security
The messaging security market includes both software and SaaS platforms. The security technologies
include antispam, antimalware, content filtering, and DLP. Example vendors and products in this
category include:

Intel (McAfee GroupShield and IronMail)

Proofpoint (Proofpoint Enterprise Protection)

Sophos (Sophos Secure Email Gateway and PureMessage)

Symantec (Symantec Messaging Gateway, Symantec Gateway Email Encryption, and
Symantec Premium AntiSpam)

Trend Micro (InterScan, ScanMail, and Hosted Email Security)

Trustwave (Trustwave Secure Email Gateway)
Network Security
The network security market includes enterprise firewall software, network intrusion detection and
prevention software, unified threat management software, IPSec/SSL VPN software, network access
control, and the associated management software. Example vendors and products in this market
include:

Check Point (Firewall Software Blade, IPS Software Blade, and Anti-Bot Software Blade)

Cisco (IOS Firewall, IOS IPS, IOS SSL VPN, and Snort)

IBM (IBM Security Network Intrusion Prevention System Virtual Appliance)

Juniper (vGW Series)

Sophos (Sophos UTM virtual appliance)
Web Security
Web security includes both software and SaaS platforms. The security technologies include Web
filtering, Web antimalware, Web application firewall, Web 2.0 security, and Web DLP. Example
vendors and products in this category include:

Barracuda Networks (Barracuda Web Security Service and Barracuda Web Filter Vx)

Cisco (Cisco Cloud Web Security SaaS)

Intel (McAfee Web Protection)

Trend Micro (InterScan Web Security and Trend Micro Smart Protection Network)

Websense (now known as Forcepoint) (Websense Cloud Web Security and Websense Web
Security Gateway Anywhere)

Zscaler (Cloud Web Security)
Security and Vulnerability Management Software
Security and vulnerability management software is a comprehensive set of solutions that focus on
allowing organizations to determine, interpret, and improve their risk posture. Software products in this
market include those that create, monitor, and assess and report security policy; determine the
configuration, structure, and attributes for a given device; perform assessments and vulnerability
scanning; aggregate and correlate security logs; and provide management of various security
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technologies from a single point of control. The following are representative vendors and products in
this market:

EMC (RSA Security Analytics, RSA Archer GRC, and RSA IT Security Risk Management
Solution)

HPE (ArcSight and HP Fortify)

IBM (Tivoli Security Policy Manager, IBM QRadar SIEM, and Rational AppScan)

Intel (McAfee Vulnerability Manager, McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator, and McAfee Asset
Manager)

Qualys (QualysGuard)
Other Security Software
Other security software covers emerging security functions that do not fit well into an existing category.
It also includes some of the underlying security functions, such as encryption tools and algorithms that
are the basis for many security functions found in other software and hardware products. Also included
in this category are products that fit a specific need but have yet to become established in the
marketplace. Products currently in this category will either grow into their own categories or eventually
be incorporated into the other market segments.
Areas covered by other security software include, but are not restricted to, encryption toolkits, security
product verification testing, storage security, Web services security, and secure operating systems.
Note that the products covered here are only those that do not qualify for one of the more established
categories. The following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Green Hills Software (INTEGRITY RTOS)

RSA, the Security Division of EMC (BSAFE)

SafeNet (DataSecure and ProtectV)

Axway (Vordel SOA Gateway)
Storage Software
Storage software manages, stores, and/or ensures the accessibility, availability, and performance of
information stored on physical storage media ranging from memory-based devices to hard drive–based
devices to magnetic-based devices. This category does not include operating systems or subsystems.
This category includes vendor revenue for the delivery of software functionality that is offered in the
form of perpetual licensing, subscription-based licensing, and public cloud SaaS services.
However, IDC tracks only storage software revenue associated with purchasable products or services
that have a related SKU or license. IDC makes no attempt to derive or estimate any financial value
associated with storage systems features that are included at no cost, or bundled with a storage
system sale, without a SKU or software license that is clearly attributable to the software. Since some
within the storage supplier community bundle storage software with a system, attribution of revenue for
some storage software offerings differs. Differences arise when one vendor charges for a software
feature, and another vendor includes it with a system sale at no cost. Some storage systems suppliers,
for example, charge for thin provisioning, while others bundle thin provisioning with the storage system
at no cost. This gives the first vendor a revenue attribution advantage within IDC's storage software
numbers but may also put that vendor at a competitive disadvantage if the broad market trend is
toward bundling. The storage software secondary market is broken down into six functional software
markets, as described in the sections that follow.
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Data Protection and Recovery Software
Data protection software includes revenue from both software and online data protection services (also
known as online backup or backup as a service [BaaS]) licensed in a subscription fashion. Data
protection and recovery software is focused on protection, restoration, and recovery of data in the
event of physical or logical errors. Included within the data protection and recovery market are data
protection, continuous data protection (CDP), bare metal restore, virtual tape library (VTL), and
backup/recovery reporting products. These capabilities include or span products that support both
physical and virtual infrastructure.
Data Protection Software
Data protection software includes both traditional backup software and continuous data protection
software and modules that integrate snapshot or cloning capabilities with traditional backups. These
solutions provide continuous as well as point-in-time copy functionality for defined data sets to tape,
disk, or optical devices and are used to recover part or all of the data set if needed because of logical
or physical error or site disaster. Today, capacity-optimized disk is one of the leading mechanisms for
operational protection and recovery processes — both on-premise and with cloud services.
However, many products support data protection to both disk and tape. As a result, included in data
protection and recovery are library and tape media management tools. Backup is often used in
conjunction with snapshot and data replication software to improve data protection performance. If
using traditional tape backup products, recovering data from a backup set generally requires the
initiation of a separate process. For environments with faster or more granular recovery objectives,
continuous data protection, snapshots, clones, and/or replication approaches are used.
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Representative vendors and products are:

Commvault (Simpana)

Veeam (Veeam Backup)

VMware (Advanced Data Protection)
Virtual Tape Library Software
This software, commonly an option or module to a broader offering, presents a virtualized view of
physical tape drives and media to a host, thus emulating traditional tape devices and tape formats and
acting like a tape library with the performance of modern disk drives. During a VTL process, data is
deposited onto disk drives just as it would be deposited onto a tape library, only faster. A virtual tape
library generally consists of a virtual tape appliance or server and VTL software that emulates
traditional tape devices and formats. Representative vendors and products are:

EMC Data Domain (VTL software)

FalconStor (Virtual Tape Library)
Backup and Recovery Reporting Software
This software is designed for heterogeneous, standalone backup reporting and management across
different backup applications, configurations, and locations. Reports are generated on backup
environment parameters such as backup job status, tape media capacity, and backup performance.
Representative vendors and products are:

Bocada (Bocada Enterprise)

EMC (Data Protection Advisor)

APTARE (Backup Manager)
Storage Replication Software
Storage replication software includes software designed to create image copies of virtual machines,
volumes, or files via techniques such as hypervisor-based replicas, clones, mirrors, and snapshots.
Replication may be storage system, application server, hypervisor based, fabric based, or appliance
based and may occur locally or between remote sites, potentially separated by long distances.
Replication and snapshot software is often used in conjunction with backup software to improve data
protection performance. This market does not include database replication software that operates at
the database, table, or record level.
Host or Hypervisor-Based Replication Software
This software typically resides at the file system or logical volume level within the operating system
and makes a point-in-time copy or snapshot of a data set to disk used for disaster recovery, testing,
application development, or reporting. In recovery, replication eliminates the intermediary step of a
restore process. Representative vendors and products are:

Commvault (Simpana Replication)

VMware (vSphere Replication)

Zerto (Virtual Replication)
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System and Data Migration Software
This block-based or file-based migration software is used to migrate data from one platform to another
for system upgrades and technology refreshes, moving the data to a new platform. Representative
vendors and products are:

Hitachi (Hitachi Tiered Storage Manager)

EMC (Federated Live Migration)
Fabric- and Appliance-Based Replication Software
Fabric- and appliance-based replication software makes use of intelligent switches and heterogeneous
array products to provide block-level replication within the SAN. The intelligent switches have
technologies that perform the volume management and replication process and eliminate the
overhead on the host while providing any-to-any replication. It also includes a software component to
appliance-based replication. Representative vendors and products are:

EMC (RecoverPoint)

FalconStor (Network Storage Server)
Array-Based Replication Software
This software makes a block-based point-in-time block copy or snapshot of storage to disk used for
disaster recovery, testing, application development, reporting, and other uses. Representative vendors
and products include the following:

EMC (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility)

NetApp (SnapMirror)
Replication Management Software
This software is used to control, monitor, and/or schedule the point-in-time copies made by the
replication product. It may automate various replication tasks, such as sync, split, and mount. Copy
data management (CDM) is also included within replication management software. Copy data
management software optimizes the number of data copies required, such that all use cases and
service levels are served while eliminating superfluous copies of the original data. Copied data refers
to any copies of original data created by any mechanism such as snapshots, mirrors, and replication
that are redundant to the primary copy. Copied data does not include RAID 10 copies.
Representative vendors and products are:

EMC (Replication Manager)

Hitachi (HiCommand Replication Monitor)

Catalogic Software (ECX)
Archiving Software
The archiving software market includes software that provides policy-based controls for copying,
moving, purging (delete from primary storage), retaining (in read-only fashion for a defined period),
and deleting (delete from secondary storage) data. Some tools provide for more sophisticated
functions such as content-based data management, indexing, and search/retrieval. Archiving software
makes tiering decisions based on file properties and business rules, but not file properties alone.
Business rules may be based on metadata such as custodian of information, business unit of origin, or
indexed content. Archiving software typically requires software on a host to manage the archiving
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process. All archiving products except those that perform database archiving are included in this
market.
Email Archiving Software
Included within the archiving software market are specialized email archive software products that
integrate with collaborative email systems through APIs to migrate email, based on policy, to a
secondary archive. Included in email archiving software are functions for email retention and
searching. Representative vendors and products are:

Symantec (Enterprise Vault)

Barracuda (Barracuda Message Archiver)
File and Other Archiving Software
File archiving software automates, based upon a defined policy, the migration of data to a different tier
of storage and media and automatically recalls files back to primary storage when required for
application or user access. File archiving software creates, based upon a defined policy, a copy of a
data set or a group of files that are transported to an alternate location or committed to long- or
intermediate-term storage. Original copies of the data set may be deleted when the archive is created
to free primary storage space, or they may be left in place if frequent access is expected. Other
archiving options include archiving for SharePoint or other unstructured content (social media, etc.)
Representative vendors and products are:

EMC (SourceOne for File systems and SharePoint)

IBM (Content Collector for Files and SharePoint)
Storage and Device Management Software
The storage and storage device management software includes both lower-level device and element
management software, as well as homogeneous and heterogeneous storage management functions
for tasks such as provisioning, reporting, monitoring, and high-level troubleshooting.
SRM and Heterogeneous SAN Management Software
This software is designed for heterogeneous, end-to-end discovery; topology mapping; capacity
utilization; and performance reporting, planning, monitoring, and management. It includes software
modules for advanced functions such as storage provisioning, host-level reporting, file-level analytics,
application and file systems integration, and event management. To qualify as a storage management
product, the product must provide for the management of a diverse set of storage systems, storage
switches, servers, and applications. Device management tools that provide discovery and
configuration of a single device type or asset are not included. Representative vendors and products
are:

EMC (EMC ControlCenter)

HP (HP Storage Essentials)
SRM and SAN Management Software for Homogeneous Environments
This software is designed for homogeneous, end-to-end discovery; topology mapping; capacity
utilization; and performance reporting, planning, monitoring, and management. It includes software
modules for advanced functions such as storage provisioning, host-level reporting, file-level analytics,
application and file systems integration, and event management. Representative vendors and products
are:
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
HDS (Hitachi Command Suite)

NetApp (OnCommand System Manager)
Storage Device Management Software
Storage device management software performs a specific set of functions for a specific, homogeneous
brand or class of storage device. Device management software utilities capture basic information on
the storage device and tend to support only that device or device family (not a heterogeneous
management tool). The functions provided by device management software include storage device
discovery, configuration, and management, with basic levels of reporting. It includes software used to
control the configuration and management of disk devices, storage arrays, and networks as well as the
associated utilities, element managers, and agents. This market also includes utilities for low-level disk
device functions such as optimization, defragmentation, and compression. Representative vendors
and products are:

EMC (Symmetrix Management Console)

NetApp (OnCommand System Manager)
Other Storage Management Software
These applications provide standalone storage management functionality such as predictive change
management, performance management, problem management, capacity planning, forecasting, or
SLA management. Representative vendors and products are:

NetApp (OnCommand Insight)

Dell (NetVault: Report Manager Pro)
Storage Infrastructure Software
The storage infrastructure software category is made up of the following types of enabling software:

Storage virtualization and federation software

File systems and volume management software

Access and path management software

Automated storage tiering software

Storage acceleration software
All of the software categories listed here are enabling software only — and not standalone or
autonomous platforms. Complete, standalone, or autonomous platforms are captured in the softwaredefined storage controller software functional market. In other words, software categories listed here
include software not packaged and sold as complete storage platforms by themselves.
Storage Virtualization and Federation Software
Array-based virtualization (enabling) software provides advanced volume virtualization for storage
within the array as well as other SAN-connected storage arrays. This software provides abstraction
and pooling capabilities but lacks the data access capabilities available within SDS platform offerings.
In other words, this virtualization software is an enabling component of a hardware-defined or
hardware-based storage platform. Representative vendors and products include:

Hitachi Universal Volume Manager

EMC VPLEX
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Host-Based File Systems and Volume Management Software
File systems and volume management software is installed on storage hosts and enables the
management of physical disks as logical devices and POSIX-compliant data constructs for application
access.
Volume management software enhances data storage management by controlling space allocation,
performance, data availability, device installation, and system monitoring of dedicated and shared
storage systems. While volume management software commonly comes with a host operating system,
some volume management software offerings remain available as standalone products or are included
with broader storage management suites. A representative vendor and product is:

Veritas (Veritas Volume Manager)
File system software provides a POSIX-compliant hierarchical structure for organizing data. In other
words, file systems provide the organization and structure for storing and retrieving data as files,
folders, and directories. File systems can be unitary in nature — meaning they are confined to a single
host or controller — or they can be distributed in nature — meaning that the file system is shared
between more than one host/controller. Software covered in this market segment only includes
standalone or distributed file systems that are enabling in nature (i.e., provide data organizational
elements but cannot exist as independent storage platforms). Products include clustered file system,
wide area file system, and file virtualization software. A representative vendor and product is:

Veritas (Veritas File System)
Access and Path Management Software
Access and path management software provides for storage path and access configuration,
management, load balancing, and failover on path failure. Only software sold as a separate software
product or option is included in the revenue for this market. Representative vendors and products are:

EMC (PowerPath)

Hitachi (Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager)

Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP)
Automated Storage Tiering Software
Automated storage tiering software enables the automated movement of data sets between differing
tiers of storage resources. This may occur at the volume level or at a subvolume level. Tiers may be
defined by performance, capacity, and/or resiliency requirements of the data/applications.
Representative vendors and products are:

EMC (Fully Automated Storage Tiering [FAST])

HDS (Hitachi Tiered Storage Manager)
Storage Acceleration Software
Storage acceleration software allows data to be cached onto an application server's internal memory
or flash-based storage resources. Storage acceleration software is designed to improve an
application's read/write response time by leveraging the performance characteristics of flash-based
storage media and by eliminating the need for IOs to travel between a server and an externally
attached storage system. Data sets can be permanently pinned to a server's flash-based resources or
destaged to external storage resources as the need for acceleration subsides. Acceleration software
has the ability to monitor IOs and automatically cache data sets based on various read/write patterns.
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Storage acceleration software is sometimes referred to as host-based solid state caching or serverside caching. Representative vendors and products are:

PernixData (FVP Software)

Condusiv (V-locity)
Software-Defined Storage Controller Software
Software-defined storage controller software (previously called "software-defined storage platforms") is
IDC's newest storage software functional market. Originally referred to as software-defined storage
platforms, IDC has updated the name of this market to better reflect the role of these products within
the storage software ecosystem. This functional market includes and combines block, file, object, and
hyperconverged software offerings that enable the creation of a storage system.
Software-defined storage fundamentally alters how storage systems are delivered (supplier view) or
procured (buyer view). IDC refers to software-defined storage as complete systems that deliver the full
suite of storage services via a software stack that uses (but is not dependent on) commodity hardware
built with off-the-shelf components.
For any solution to be included within the software-defined storage controller software functional
market, it needs to be extensible, autonomous, and allow data access via known and/or published
interfaces (APIs or standard file, block, or object interfaces). For any solution to be classified as
software-defined storage, it must satisfy the following requirements:

The solution should not contain any proprietary hardware components like custom ASICs,
chipsets, memory components, or CPUs — and the software code should not make any
assumption of such components being present to offer any essential storage (or storage
efficiency) services.

The solution should be able to run on multiple (physical or virtual) hardware instances that are
not factory configured by the supplier. Buyers should be able to procure the platform as
software and deploy it in a virtual environment or directly on any physical hardware of their
choice (as long as this hardware belongs to the same peer class listed in the supplier's
hardware compatibility list).

The solution is a standalone or autonomous system. In other words, it provides all essential
northbound storage services and handles all southbound data persistence functions without
requiring additional hardware or software. IDC therefore considers file systems and logical
volume managers to be building blocks of a software-defined storage solution rather than
complete systems.
Note: IDC does not state that commodity means x86 platforms only. There are several non-x86
platforms like Power and ARM that are becoming commoditized and may ultimately be deemed
suitable for mass consumption. Also, the term controller refers to a commodity/off-the-shelf/industrystandard server that performs the same role as that of a controller in a hardware-defined/based
storage system. In the case of a hardware-defined/based system, such software is often referred to as
a firmware or a storage OS. In fact, several storage suppliers are making the same controller firmware
or storage OS available as a software-defined storage controller software. The chief difference is that
the latter is devoid of any hardware-specific dependencies. IDC uses data organization as the starting
point for a classification of software-defined storage controller software. In other words, most softwaredefined storage solutions use controller software that organizes data in the form of file, object, and/or
block. Furthermore, SDS solutions can leverage a variety of persistent data storage resources such as
internal storage resources (like PCIe/NVMe flash cards, nonvolatile memory, solid state drives, and
hard disk drives), external disk arrays (as long as no storage-specific functions are "offloaded" to these
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arrays), tape drives, and even higher-level services like NoSQL databases, object storage, and cloudbased resources. SDS solutions should offer a full suite of data access interfaces, storage, and data
management services (included federation services). Finally, SDS solutions should be delivered in
multiple forms including appliances, software, and subscription-based offerings.
IDC does not make any presumption on the operating platforms used in SDS solutions. SDS platforms
can be built using open source operating platforms (e.g., Linux, OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD) or using
proprietary operating platforms (e.g., Solaris and Windows). The use of the latter does not alter or
invalidate the classification of the solution as SDS.
Block-Based Software-Defined Storage Controller Software
Block-based software-defined storage controller software employs a block-based data organization
scheme. It is similar to the mechanisms employed by logical volume managers wherein data is
organized in the form of blocks. Physical resources are grouped in the form of disk or RAID groups and
then chunked up into logical constructs such as plexes and volumes (and soon VM-specific constructs
like VVOLS). Volumes are then presented as logical units with SCSI identifiers referred to as logical
unit numbers (LUNs). Block-based data organization is widely used in several virtual tape libraries that
present a tape-drive interface but use files and volumes to organize data.
Block-based SDS software enables storage array–independent management of storage or data. It
isolates and abstracts the internal details of different storage systems and services and simplifies
storage management by masking physical complexities from servers, applications, and other network
resources. Such software is frequently used for pooling or aggregating storage or to add new
capabilities to available storage resources. It is common for block-based storage virtualization to be a
feature of a storage system. However, only software sold as a separate software product or option is
included in this market. Representative vendors and products are:

DataCore (SANsymphony-V)

IBM (SAN Volume Controller)

FalconStor (IPStor)
File-Based Software-Defined Storage Controller Software
File-based software-defined storage controller software employs a file system for organizing data and
providing standard storage interfaces. Storage platforms that employ file-based data organization
provide the organization and structure for storing and retrieving data as files, folders, and directories,
and a namespace provides external (to the file system) or network-based data access.
File-based software-defined storage controller software can be unitary in nature — meaning it is
confined to a single host or controller — or distributed in nature — meaning that the data organization
and interfaces are shared between more than one host/controller. Software covered in this market
segment therefore includes standalone, distributed file-based platforms for which the primary purpose
is to provide access to storage access. These file-based platforms support sophisticated intersystem
record and file locking capabilities because of the underlying file system that they use. Representative
vendors and products are:

ZFS-based storage platforms

GlusterFS-based storage (Red Hat Storage Server 2.0)

IBM GPFS- and LTFS-based platforms
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Object-Based Software-Defined Storage Controller Software
Object-based software-defined storage controller software solutions employ a higher level of service
(often constructed on top of local file systems or databases with extensible attribute management
capabilities) that includes a container-type mechanism for data organization (rather than a hierarchical
tree-based structure found in file systems and one in which data is stored as objects with a reference
ID) and a separate metadata repository (which often at times is NoSQL based) that is used to store
rich contextual information on the objects. In addition, object platforms extensively employ either
erasure coding (a form of data redundancy that replaces RAID and strict replication) and/or data
replicas (in which data copies are created and distributed across multiple nodes for redundancy).
Representative vendors and products are:

IBM (Cleversafe)

Western Digital (AmpliStor XT)

NetApp (StorageGRID Webscale Software)
Hyperconverged Software–Defined Storage Controller Software
Hyperconverged software–defined storage controller software solutions natively collapse core storage,
compute, and storage networking functions into a single software solution or appliance. This is in
contrast to traditional integrated platforms and systems in which autonomous compute, storage, and
networking systems are integrated at the factory or by resellers. While these systems will often use an
Ethernet switch to cluster multiple nodes together, they do not rely on disparate storage networking
equipment for data movement between the storage and compute. In addition to bringing storage and
computing into a single node (or a cluster of nodes, each offering compute and storage), all revenue
related to OSS components, packaged and distributed using container technology, remains part of the
OSS functional market.
Hyperconverged systems utilize a hypervisor that provides workload adjacency and containerization,
hardware abstraction, and data management. The hypervisor also hosts essential management
software needed to manage the solution. Representative vendors and products are:

Microsoft (Storage Spaces)

VMware (VSAN)

Nutanix (Nutanix Operating System)
System Software
System software is the foundation of software products that collectively operate the hardware on which
business applications are built. Market definitions are discussed in the sections that follow.
Operating Systems and Subsystems
Operating system and subsystem software includes the machine-level instructions and generalpurpose functions that control the operation and use of CPU resources (both centralized and
networked). These operating systems quite often also include network services such as Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol (DHCP) for IP address assignment, distributed naming services (DNS) software
(which provides a shared database of system resources and access control information), and directory
service software (such as Microsoft's Active Directory or LDAP services), as well as other integrated
network facilities such as print and file services. Operating systems and subsystems also include
revenue from certain mobile devices including smartphones, tablets, and convertibles.
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Representative vendors and products include the following:

Apple Computer (OS X and iOS)

HPE (HP-UX)

IBM (z/OS, IBM i, and AIX)

Microsoft (Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server
2008, as well as older Windows products)

Micro Focus (Novell Open Enterprise Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and SUSE Linux
Enterprise Desktop)

Oracle (Solaris, Oracle Linux)

Red Hat Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop)
OSS functionality is also provided on a nonrevenue-generating basis by open source versions of client
and server products (including Ubuntu, CentOS, and Debian), as well as mobile implementations
typically but not exclusively based on the publicly available Android code base. These free solutions
do not contribute revenue to this market but do serve as a foundation for revenue-producing products
at other layers of the software stack.
Revenue related to OSS components, packaged and distributed, using container technology remains
part of the OSS functional market.
Availability and Clustering Software
Availability and clustering software virtualizes the system services of multiple systems (physical
servers or virtual servers), so that they appear in some sense as a single computing resource. This
market includes failover clustering software, which maintains a "heartbeat" between the linked servers
and restarts workloads on alternate servers if the heartbeat (or the lack of it) signals that one of the
servers is offline. It also includes cluster managers and compute farm managers, as well as loadbalancing software and application virtualization software that stands between the user request and
the processors or systems that are supporting applications or services. This software determines
which processor or system has the most available capacity and routes the workload to that computing
resource. Representative vendors and products include the following:

HPE Serviceguard

IBM PowerHA SystemMirror (formerly IBM HACMP)

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering (formerly Microsoft Cluster Service
[MSCS])

IBM (Platform Computing's LSF)

Symantec Veritas Cluster Server (VCS)
Virtual Client Computing
IDC defines the virtual client computing (VCC) functional market as a client computing model that
leverages a range of brokering software and display protocols to enable server-based client computing
and improve upon the limitations associated with the traditional distributed desktop environment. The
VCC market includes products that enable centralized virtual desktop, virtual user session, and other
forms of client virtualization, to include type 2 hypervisor, containerized, and cloud-based solutions for
delivering virtualized desktops and applications.
Representative vendors and products include the following:
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
Citrix's XenDesktop, XenApp, and XenClient

Microsoft's App-V, Remote Desktop Services, and RemoteApp

VMware's Horizon View, Fusion, and Horizon Air

Ericom's Connect
Software-Defined Compute Software
Software-defined compute (SDC) software encompasses a number of compute abstraction
technologies that are implemented at various layers of the system software stack. These software
technologies are often used in the context of public or private clouds but can also be implemented in
noncloud environments, particularly virtualized environments.
Commercial solutions today increasingly offer SDC software bundled with other infrastructure
software, management software, and application platforms. Software-defined compute software
revenues reported in the IDC Software Tracker are limited to SDC license, subscription, and
maintenance revenues. Self-supported open source does not generate revenue in IDC's Software
Tracker markets but does generate shipment numbers, which may be tracked elsewhere. Suites that
bundle multiple products together may allocate revenue to multiple functional markets with only
portions of the product's revenue being allocated to SDC.
Virtual Machine Software
Virtual machine software (VMS), also known today as hypervisor software, uses low-level capabilities
offered by certain hardware environments or installs a complete hardware emulation layer using
software to support multiple operating environments and the related stacks of applications, application
development and deployment software, and system infrastructure software. This segmentation is often
referred to as server virtualization or partitioning. Hypervisors also increasingly serve as the
foundational infrastructure software for public and private clouds.
Representative vendors and revenue-generating products include the following:

Citrix XenServer (portions thereof)

IBM (PowerVM)

Microsoft Hyper-V (included with Windows Server)

Oracle VM for x86, Oracle VM for SPARC, Oracle Solaris Kernel Zones

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (portions thereof)

VMware vSphere
Container Engine Software
Software containers are an operating system virtualization technology, similar in concept to
hypervisors except they abstract an OS instead of server hardware. Each application is presented with
a pristine virtual copy of the OS, and the application is made to believe that it is the only application
installed and running on that OS. An application and its immediate dependencies are packaged into a
container file. Optionally, various OS user-space tools and libraries may also be included.
The core container virtualization and execution software technology is allocated into two primary
system software markets. The operating system kernel is responsible for handling the basic isolation
that makes containers possible and is an inherent feature of the operating system. This revenue is
recognized within the existing operating systems and subsystems (OSS) market.
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Container engine software is responsible for packaging/building the container, implementing the kernel
container isolation features, and then unpacking and executing the container as needed.
Representative vendors with revenue-generating products include the following:

Canonical (LXD)

CoreOS Rkt (as part of CoreOS and CoreOS Tectonic)

Docker Engine (as part of Docker Datacenter, Docker Universal Control Plane)

Microsoft Windows Containers (as part of Windows Server)

Red Hat Atomic Host

Oracle Solaris Native Zones

Virtuozzo (portions thereof)

VMware's Integrated Containers, Photon OS, and Photon Machine
Cloud System Software
Cloud system software represents a tightly bundled combination of server abstraction software and
node-level controller software, often sold as part of a larger cloud infrastructure platform solution. The
compute resource layer represents a combination of virtual machine, container engine, and/or
operating system software running on a physical server, which is designated as a cloud compute node.
The controller software virtualizes groups of compute nodes into a single logical compute resource.
Cloud system software also exposes APIs that simplify the scheduling and control of VMs, containers,
and bare metal servers running on the node and maintains a database of resource state and policies.
Representative vendors and revenue-producing products that include cloud system software are:

Accelerite CloudPlatform, based on CloudStack (acquired from Citrix)

Canonical Ubuntu OpenStack (portions thereof)

HPE Helion OpenStack and Helion Eucalyptus (portions thereof)

IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack (portions thereof)

Microsoft Azure Stack (portions thereof)

Mirantis OpenStack (portions thereof)

Oracle OpenStack (portions thereof)

Red Hat OpenStack Platform (portions thereof)

SUSE Cloud (portions thereof)

VMware (VMware Integrated OpenStack, vCloud Director)
Other System Software
Other system software is infrastructure software for systems and applications (but not storage) that is
not otherwise categorized. Such software is used mainly by system programmers and administrators
to perform housekeeping functions and add functions to operating systems that are not otherwise
supplied. Examples include file conversion utilities, screen drivers and fonts, remote control software,
and sort utilities. This category also includes enterprise connectivity software that enables devices to
exchange, modify, and/or present host-based network data. Representative vendors and products
include the following:

Adobe (Fonts)

EMC/Softworks (Catalog Solution)
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
IBM (Communications Server and WebSphere Host Integration and WebSphere Edge Server)

Microsoft (Host Integration Server)

Symantec (Norton Utilities)

TeamViewer (TeamViewer)

LogMeIn (Rescue, Central, Pro, and join.me)
Geographic Area Definitions
Worldwide revenue is divided by geographic area. At a high level, or macroregion, the areas defined
are the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA); and Asia/Pacific (including Japan)
(APJ). IDC software data products report geographic data at various levels of detail — in some cases,
down to individual countries:

Americas includes North America (the United States [and all of its political subdivisions] and
Canada) and Latin America (Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico).

EMEA includes Western Europe (Austria, Belgium/Luxembourg, Denmark, France, Finland,
Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) and Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and
Africa (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and South Africa).

APJ includes Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (Australia, China [PRC], Hong Kong, India,
Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and
Thailand) and Japan.
Operating Environment Definitions
Operating environments represent a dimension projected on software revenue reflecting the
deployment platform where software is run. Five categories are considered as outlined in this section:
mainframe, Unix, Linux/other open source environments, Windows, and other. IDC reports on
selective software markets according to these operating environment categories. Another dimension
related to deployment choices is whether or not the software is running in the public cloud — which IDC
reports on at the secondary market level and for selective functional markets.
The preferred method to model software revenue by operating environment is to allocate revenue to
operating environments based on where the license revenue is derived (for platform-specific licenses).
An alternative method is to allocate revenue based on where the product is run (i.e., based on the
percentage of executables on various platforms). Revenue may originate from traditional perpetual
licensing purchases or through annual subscription or maintenance licensing. Note that operating
systems producing no direct revenue may still be used for deployment of revenue-producing layered
software that is subsequently captured in IDC's market forecasts. Open source products may be
monetized as part of a PaaS or SaaS layer if it is built on or derived from generally available operating
system versions (i.e., not a unique product that is not otherwise available in the market). Operating
environments include the following:

Mainframe environments include IBM's z/OS, OS/390, VSE, VM, and z/VM that run on IBM
System z and zSeries hardware and other single-vendor mainframe operating systems such
as those from Unisys, Amdahl, Fujitsu, and Hitachi. Single-vendor, non-supercomputer, and
massively parallel processor environments are also included in the mainframe category.

Unix includes all operating systems software that is based on Unix System V, OSF/1, or
Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). This category would include products such as AIX, HPUX, Apple Mac OS X, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare, Solaris, Tru64 Unix, NetBSD,
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OpenBSD, and other operating systems used primarily aboard RISC-based and Intel
architecture–based servers, workstations, minicomputers, and clients that are designed to run
the Unix operating system. Unix-based supercomputer and massively parallel processor
environments are also included in this category. Operating systems that are based on other
kernels are not included, even if they have passed the Unix certification test from the Open
Group. Note that nonrevenue-producing versions of Unix such as FreeBSD are classified as
Unix operating systems by this taxonomy for the purpose of allocating revenue-producing
layered software by underlying operating system.

Linux and other open source environments include all operating systems deployed aboard
servers, workstations, minicomputers, and client devices (PCs, notebooks, PC function slates,
etc.) that are based on Linux or other open source operating environments. Typically, this
software is available both commercially with associated support and maintenance costs and at
little or no cost in source code form. Software of this type is usually licensed under the Free
Software Foundation's general-purpose license (GPL) or other licensing that encourages free
access to the source code to these operating environments. Note that nonrevenue-producing
versions of Linux are still classified as Linux operating systems by this taxonomy for the
purpose of allocating revenue-producing layered software by underlying operating system.

Windows 32 and 64 include all operating systems that support the Win32 APIs and Win64
APIs, including Microsoft's Windows 9x, Windows Me, Windows NT Workstation, all versions
of Windows NT Server, Windows 2000 Professional, all versions of Windows 2000 Server, all
versions of Windows XP, all versions of Windows Vista, all versions of Windows 7, and all
editions of Windows Server 2003, including the release 2 (R2) versions, as well as Windows
Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. We also include Windows 8 client revenue
(Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and Windows 8 Enterprises) and revenue for all versions of
Windows Server 2012. Revenue from both Microsoft and other vendors that run solutions on
Windows Azure and SQL Azure will be included on the Windows platform for all functional
markets.

Information is collected about other operating environments but generally only reported in the
aggregate. These other operating environments include the following:

i5 and OS/400 include IBM i5, OS/400, and predecessors that operate aboard IBM 3X,
AS/400, iSeries, and System i family of machines.

Other host/server environments include all other operating systems that are used as either
host or server environments aboard server hardware systems. Some examples of
operating systems in this category are HPE OpenVMS and The Attachmate Group's
Novell NetWare, Novell Open Enterprise Server (with the NetWare Kernel), and residual
revenue associated with discontinued operating systems, such as HP MPE/iX and IBM
OS/2.

Other single-user operating environments include all other operating systems that are
used as client or standalone environments. Some examples of operating systems in this
category are 16-bit Windows and DOS (including MS-DOS, PC-DOS, and DR-DOS),
OS/2, and non-Unix versions of Mac OS (generally Mac OS 9.x and earlier).

Mobile operating environments (new IDC platform) are operating systems designed for
and used in mobile devices including smartphones, feature phones, and tablets. Mobile
operating environments may be a specialized version of an existing client or server
operating environment, such as a derivative of Linux (Android) or Windows (Windows RT).
Products may also include unique, specialized operating system software that has been
designed for, and only used in, mobile devices. An example of the latter would be Apple
iOS. The operating system may be commercially available to device makers (such as
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Windows RT), available as an open source download (Android), or may be delivered
exclusively as pre-installed on devices (such as iOS).

General-purpose embedded operating environments (renamed from embedded operating
environments and related subsystems) include products that incorporate the machinelevel instructions and general-purpose functions that control the operation and use of CPU
resources in smart, embedded, full and limited-function devices including (but not
exclusively) smartphones and media tablets. General-purpose embedded operating
environments may either offer some form of a user interface (graphical, text, voice, or
other) or include the required services or APIs to allow developers to build their own
interface if so required. These environments generally include defined and documented
APIs that can be used by application software, which in turn is created by related
application development tools. General-purpose embedded operating environment
products may include both source code and executable/runtime code, or just
executable/runtime code, and may offer either real-time or non–real-time operational
characteristics. Real time is defined as the ability for the system to respond in a
predetermined time to scheduled or interrupt-driven events. Non–real time is defined as the
operating system not promising a predetermined response time to external events. In
many cases, general-purpose embedded operating environments are able to load and
execute user-selected application software. General-purpose embedded operating
environments tracked by IDC might be specialized versions of general-purpose operating
systems (such as Android as a derivative of Linux and Windows RT, which is a specialized
version of the Windows 8 client operating system) or a unique product such as Apple iOS.
The operating system may be commercially available to device makers such as Windows
RT, available as an open source download like Android, or delivered exclusively as preinstalled on devices such as iOS.

Limited-purpose appliance operating environments (renamed from hardware appliances)
consist of hardware with an integrated, hardened operating system; a limited applications
set; and no user software installation. Appliances differ from pure embedded operating
systems in that the operating system used in an appliance is typically a hardware-specific,
special-purpose operating system that is not commercially available on a standalone basis
from the appliance vendor. However, in some cases, an appliance may be constructed
utilizing an embedded operating system that is commercially available from another
vendor. Examples of such a configuration include a storage server built using Windows
Storage Server 2003, a firewall appliance built upon an embedded version of Windows
Server 2003, or a security or networking device built using an embedded version of Linux
from, for example, MontaVista Software or Red Hat. In most cases, appliance devices
integrate operating system application software together with application functionality,
security management, policy management, quality of service, load balancing, high
availability, and bandwidth management. Like the operating system itself, this layered
software is in most cases unique and specific to the appliance — and not commercially
available independent from the appliance itself. However, in certain cases, the layered
software may be commercially available from the firm that produced the software. For
instance, an appliance based on an embedded version of the Windows operating system
may also incorporate certain layered commercial software products from Microsoft. In this
context, commercially available operating systems (embedded or general purpose) and
commercially available layered software products that are integrated in appliance devices
will continue to be tracked in IDC's pure software market segments, in addition to being
tracked as part of the appliance device. This tracking methodology does not lead to double
counting because appliance revenue cannot be combined with pure software revenue
because of the differing taxonomical definitions describing these market segments.
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RELATED MARKETS
Although the key benefits of IDC's functional software taxonomy are its mutually exclusive and
collectively exhaustive characteristics, the concept of a "market" sometimes requires a view of the
function-based data from a different perspective. In addition to the functional, geographic, and
operating environment perspectives described previously, IDC defines a wide range of other market
views, one of which is termed a competitive market. Competitive markets are combinations of the
whole or fractions of functional markets. Other market views could define a market particular to a
channel or represent revenue in subsets of geographic regions. By extension, and in the reality of the
IT marketplace, market views other than for functional software markets can include systems and
services revenue as well, but for the sake of simplicity, this discussion covers only software
competitive markets.
Formal Competitive Markets Tracked
Table 5 lists IDC's 2016 formal competitive markets. For convenience, the current competitive markets
formally tracked are subsequently sorted and presented by the three primary markets: applications,
application development and deployment software, and system infrastructure software — in the same
order as the previously mentioned functional market descriptions — but a competitive market does not
necessarily derive only from the functional markets in one primary software market.
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TABLE 5
IDC's Software Competitive Markets, 2016
IDC Competitive Market Name
Segment of Competitive Market
Business analytics software
 Business intelligence and analytic tools
 Spatial information analytics tools
 Analytic data management and integration platform
software analytic data integration
 Analytic data management
 Analytic and performance management applications
 CRM analytic applications
 Supply chain and product analytic applications
 Services operations analytic applications
 Workforce analytic applications
 Enterprise performance management applications
 Production planning applications
Communities
 Innovation management
Content collaboration
 Team collaborative applications
 File synchronization and sharing software
 Content management
Customer communications management
 Output management tools
 Authoring and publishing software
XRP application suites
IT PPM
IT PPM SaaS
Mobile enterprise applications
Product life-cycle management applications
Services resource planning applications
Digital commerce applications
Electronic design automation
Platform as a service
 Cloud application platforms
 Cloud integration services (CISs)
 Cloud data services (CDSs)
 Cloud application development and life-cycle services
(CADLSs)
 Other cloud platform services
Business process management software
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TABLE 5
IDC's Software Competitive Markets, 2016
IDC Competitive Market Name
Segment of Competitive Market
Cloud testing/ASQ SaaS
Embedded database management systems
DevOps
Agile application life-cycle management (ALM) software
IoT analytics and information management
Master data management
Mobile testing
Requirements visualization, definition, and management
Software quality analysis and measurement
Mobile enterprise application development platforms
Business commerce networks
IT asset management software
Enterprise mobility management software
 Change and configuration management
 Security and vulnerability management
 File synchronization and sharing software
Mobile enterprise security software
Software distribution
Source: IDC, 2016
As mentioned previously, competitive markets are combinations of the whole or fractions of functional
markets. They are derived mostly by looking at the current or prospective value proposition or usage of
the functional markets involved in the competitive market's derivation model. The model is then
confirmed by looking at the individual supplier's selling practices vis-à-vis the value proposition or the
IT user's practices vis-à-vis usage.
In addition to value proposition/usage, competitive market derivations can reflect such market
dynamics as the following:

Underlying standards (e.g., Web services)

Architecture (e.g., service-oriented architecture)

Technologies being implemented (e.g., master data management)

Other dimensions (e.g., vendor coalitions would be a possible example, although no such
competitive market is currently specified)
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In addition, competitive markets can model two or more of such market dynamics factors. For
example, the definition of the ERP software competitive market is dependent on both its function (i.e.,
must include accounting and management of a business resource such as people, projects, inventory,
and/or manufacturing) and its architecture (must integrate a UI, data set, and logic).
IDC has sized and forecast a variety of the other software market views not listed here and will
continue to establish views into additional markets orthogonal to, or aggregates of, functional markets
based on the evolving nature of the software industry. Almost all of these "other" market analyses are
based on demand-side information, such as that obtained from IT user surveys. Also note that not all
of the competitive markets defined in this taxonomy are sized and forecast each year. Contact IDC if
you do not see a software market that you need information about.
Not Necessarily Mutually Exclusive
Note that unlike functional software markets, these other market views — including competitive markets
— are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They can be mutually exclusive but, unlike IDC functional
software markets, do not have to be by definition.
Also note that IDC can provide competitive market views that are derived from a single functional
market. A competitive market derived from a single functional market (e.g., event management
software used in a particular way in systems management) is called a competitive submarket. Much of
the value of this approach stems from the ability to view vendor-based functional market revenue from
a usage perspective. Examples of market usage categories include by application (e.g., performance
management for email), by industry (e.g., performance management for financial services), and by
delivery form (e.g., channels/alliances and service providers of performance management software).
Applications-Based Competitive Markets
Business Analytics Software
IDC defines the business analytics software market as an aggregation of several software tools and
application markets with the functionality to aggregate, manage, organize, analyze, access, and
deliver structured and unstructured data.
The business analytics software market has three primary segments: analytic and performance
management applications, business intelligence and analytic tools, and analytic data management and
integration platform software. Each of the primary segments has subsegments as follows:

Business intelligence and analytic tools. These software tools include query, reporting, and
analysis tools; advanced analytics tools; and text and rich media analysis tools.

Spatial information analytics tools. These software tools conduct spatial or location analytics.

Analytic data management and integration platform software. IDC defines data warehousing
as a process that organizes time-based data coming from multiple sources according to
subjects meaningful to the business and driven by the need to inform decision makers. The
data warehouse platform segment includes two market subsegments:


Analytic data integration. These software tools are software used in the design, cleansing,
transformation, loading, and administration of the data warehouse.

Analytic data management. These software tools are database management software
used to manage data in the data warehouse. IDC further segments this market into
relational data warehouses and nonrelational data stores.
Analytic and performance management applications. IDC defines these applications as
software that must meet each of the following three conditions:
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
Business process support. Commercial application software that structures and automates
a group of tasks pertaining to the review and optimization of business operations (i.e.,
control) or the discovery and development of new business (i.e., opportunity)

Separation of function. Can function independently of an organization's core transactional
applications, yet can be dependent on such applications for data and may send results
back to these applications

Time-oriented, integrated data from multiple sources. Extracts, transforms, and integrates
data from multiple sources (internal or external to the business) — supporting a time-based
dimension for analysis of past and future trends — or accesses such a database
IDC tracks the following performance management and analytic applications subsegments:

Customer relationship analytic applications

Supply chain and product analytic applications

Services operations analytic applications

Workforce analytic applications
In addition, IDC classifies two functional markets as being part of the performance management and
analytic applications market. These markets, which are defined elsewhere in this study, are:

Enterprise performance management applications

Production planning applications
Communities
Communities enable the collection and incorporation of user-generated feedback and ideas (content
can include files and rich media) and may also include capabilities such as blogs, discussion forums,
profiles, tagging, comments, and ratings/ranking. Communities operate on owned digital properties
and can be customer, employee, or partner/supplier based and serve a specific member/communitybased organization. Solutions may enable aggregation of external social data sources into owned sites
through social log-in and social plug-ins (including proprietary connectors, Web services, or iFrames).
Representative vendors and products include the following:

Convio

Jive Communities

Lithium

Oracle RightNow Social Experience
The communities market definition excludes:

Social analytics functionality included in any of the CRM segments of sales automation,
marketing automation, customer service, or contact center

Social media publishing capabilities; this also includes social media ad placement
Content Collaboration
Content collaboration solutions are enterprise productivity tools that enable users to collaboratively
author, share, sync, and manage content from multiple devices. Content collaboration solutions may
be deployed in public clouds, on-premise, or a mix of the two. For example, customers may combine
on-premise file storage or content management with cloud sync and share or other cloud collaborative
capabilities. Content collaboration represents a broader market view than enterprise file
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synchronization and sharing software as it overlays parts of several additional markets including team
collaborative applications, authoring and publishing, and content management.
Content collaboration solutions include some or all of the following capabilities:

Enterprise file synchronization and sharing

Team collaboration features such as workspaces, team file sharing, comments, notes,
discussions, and wikis

Task management and workflow

Collaborative content authoring

Content management capabilities

Reporting and analytics on user activity and content use

APIs and/or connectors that allow for integration with other systems
The following are representative vendors:

Alfresco

Box

EMC

Google

Huddle

IBM

Intralinks

Microsoft

Oracle

OpenText
IDC has defined one submarket to the content collaboration competitive market.
Enterprise Cloud Content Collaboration
Enterprise cloud content collaboration (eC3) solutions represent a subset of the content collaboration
market. eC3 solutions are multitenant SaaS solutions that are deployed in public clouds. EC3 vendors
may provide connectors or APIs that enable replication of content to third-party storage systems or onpremise repositories; however, the eC3 market view excludes revenue for on-premise software.
The following are representative vendors:

Box

Google

Huddle

IBM

Intralinks

Microsoft
Customer Communications Management
Customer communications management solutions automate customized document production by
dynamically combining information from back-end data sources (e.g., systems of record) with text,
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images, and other content (often pulled from a content management system). CCM solutions enable
organizations to economically generate customized documents (in batch, interactively, or on demand)
with timely, accurate, and relevant information that is tailored to the needs of a specific target
audience/recipient — streamlining the document production process.
Although CCM solutions were born out of the need to automate the generation of printed documents,
CCM vendors generally support multichannel output including email, SMS, and HTML formats, in
addition to paper/PDF. Digital communications may contain embedded URLs (e.g., to Web pages or
videos) and interactive elements (e.g., when delivered as a PDF). Print continues to be a mainstay of
the CCM market, and high-volume solutions offer robust print and job management capabilities.
CCM solutions apply a structured document description (e.g., a template, set of rules, or combination
of the two) — and, for paper output, a paginated presentation model — to content components and
back-end data to populate and assemble data and content into a final, individual instance. (A
paginated presentation model applies formatting objects to content that are aware of physical page
dimensions, page breaks, and page styling elements.)
CCM solutions generate outbound communications and help address concerns around brand image,
industry practice, and regulatory requirements. They are frequently deployed in conjunction with
solutions that automate inbound document capture, content management, and other applications to
automate an end-to-end customer interaction.
xRP Applications Suites
In addition to the functional breakdown of the applications market provided by IDC in multiple
subscription research services, IDC divides the total application market revenue results (the total of
CRM, ERM, SCM, operations and manufacturing, and engineering secondary markets) into separate
markets between integrated xRP suites and standalone applications. The distinction between the two
categories is as follows:

xRP products are applications solutions that could, in theory, automate an entire operation and
include a mix of accounting, human resources, procurement, inventory management order
management, product planning and execution, operations management, and customer
information.

By comparison, standalone (so called best-of-breed or best-of-class) applications automate a
specific operational need (or closely aligned needs) in product planning and execution,
accounting, human capital management, payroll accounting, and customer relationship
management or any other of the more than 20 functional application market areas.
Typically, xRP suites are architected with an integrated set of business rules and metadata, accessing
a single data set (logical or physical) from a single, consistent user interface. In the IDC view, we use
xRP rather than ERP because the suites are limited to neither resource planning nor manufacturing,
from which the term ERP comes. The term xRP allows for the category to include industry-specific
resource planning suites for government, higher education, retail, manufacturing, and many others in
addition to managing business operations of a corporation. xRP suites are available as on-premise,
hybrid, and increasingly, cloud or SaaS deployments.
The xRP applications market is derived from the following functional areas: contact center, customer
service, enterprise asset management, financial accounting, financial performance and strategy
management, human capital management, inventory management, logistics, manufacturing,
marketing, order management, other back office, payroll accounting, procurement, collaborative
product data management, production planning, project and portfolio management, sales, and
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services operations management. Similarly, although standalone applications are often termed best of
breed or best of class, IDC does not mean to imply that xRP products cannot feature capabilities in a
given functional area equal to or better than those found in some standalone applications.
Representative vendors of xRP products include Acumatica, Deltek, Epicor, FinancialForce, Infor,
Microsoft, NetSuite, Oracle, Plex SAP, Unit4, and Workday.
Examples of standalone applications include Intacct Financials, Intuit Quickbooks Online,
salesforce.com's Sales and Service Clouds, Ultimate Software's UltiPro, and many other non-XRP
application products.
IT PPM
IT PPM software represents a competitive submarket of the larger project and portfolio management
(PPM) functional market and the software configuration, change, and process management markets
(including agile PPM providers).
IT PPM represents a cross-industry usage of PPM technologies meant to augment the effectiveness of
IT departments to enable more adaptive business approaches. In the early 2000s, the use of PPM by
IT departments continued to grow because of the addition of portfolio management features, which
were beginning to give IT managers and CIOs better visibility into their operations as well as into
budgetary and resource utilization.
IT PPM tools facilitate joint business and IT planning. These products provide portfolio visibility into IT
projects, programs, and resource allocations and costs in conjunction with expected business value to
enable effective prioritization. Product functionality encompasses a suite of primary capabilities that
include project, program, resource, portfolio, process, demand, workflow, and cost/budgetary
management for IT. The IT PPM market includes software revenue from IT end-user organizations and
consultancies/outsourcers that use IT PPM tools to manage the portfolio of IT projects and IT
programs. Representative examples of such vendors and products include:

CA Technologies

Compuware

HP

Microsoft

Oracle

Planview

Rally Software

SAP

VersionOne
IT PPM SaaS
The IT PPM SaaS market is a competitive market representing the software-as-a-service portion of the
IT PPM competitive market. To qualify as a SaaS solution, the offering is provided by a third-party,
offsite provider and is not deployed internally by the end user. It is also required to support the majority
of the following attributes:

It is a shared one-to-many service built for a public market, not for a single customer. (We also
see the emergence of private cloud and hybrid IT PPM solutions, but they are not included in
this competitive market.)
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
It is provided as a "turnkey" solution that integrates required resources.

It provides dynamic, fine-grained service "scaling" associated with the needs of the business,
the numbers of users, and so forth.

It supports user-oriented pricing, utilization, and cost tracking.

It enables self-service provisioning with cloud IT PPM (although some onboarding may be
necessary with staff support for more complex customizations).
SaaS and emerging cloud IT PPM offerings often bundle hardware, services, and software licenses
into an annual (or sometimes monthly) subscription fee — though in some cases, the user may license
the software separately from the supporting infrastructure and services. SaaS can act as an on-ramp
to cloud IT PPM. IT PPM is particularly well suited to a cloud delivery model, given the need to mirror
production systems with appropriate infrastructure to support consistent, well-managed, quality
approaches. IDC's estimates for this market include all revenue associated with the delivery of
services that support the functionality described previously.
Representative examples of such vendors and products include:

AtTask (now known as Workfront)

CA Technologies

Compuware

Daptiv

HP

Innotas

Planview

Rally Software

VersionOne
Mobile Enterprise Applications
Mobile enterprise applications (MEAs) consist of those commercial enterprise applications designed
expressly for mobile and wireless environments. MEAs focus on delivering the critical front-end
functionality for mobile workers based on the role of the worker and the subsegment of data that that
worker requires from existing back-end functionality residing on an internal enterprise IT system or
accessed via a hosted environment. Such applications include but are not limited to sales force
automation, field force automation (FFA), field service, supply chain management, services operations
management, time and expenses (T&E), logistics, and messaging. Such applications are
complementary to mobile middleware and infrastructure software. As part of the MEA solution, vendors
may also provide a mobile infrastructure platform and other tools for application modification.
Representative vendors include the following pure-play MEA vendors and large ISVs:

IBM (IBM Cognos Mobile and IBM Sterling Control Center Mobile)

Kony Solutions (Kony Apps)

Oracle (Mobile Field Service, Mobile Sales, Mobile Solutions, and Mobile Supply Chain)

salesforce.com (Salesforce Mobile)

SAP (Mobile Apps)

Spring Mobile Solutions (marketMaster, salesMaster, distroMaster, and deliveryMaster)
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Product Life-Cycle Management Applications
PLM is an enterprise software application solution concept that brings together a number of activities
required to develop, model, track, manage, and control the products and manufacture, sell, maintain
and, finally, retire these products. PLM applications are:

Actively involved in enabling at least some of the PLM functions described

Sold into product-centric environments (i.e., manufacturing and enterprise asset management)

Integrated to allow for data exchange and collaboration among employees with a range of
different responsibilities within the enterprise as well as with outside partners (customers,
marketing and sales, outsourced manufacturers, maintenance providers, and so on)
To be defined by IDC as a provider of PLM solutions, vendors' enterprise software should offer any of
the following core functions:

Engineering software or some access to it, including mechanical computer-aided design,
engineering, and manufacturing (MCAD/CAE/CAM)

Collaborative product data management, which according to IDC's taxonomy has a number of
subsegments, among them vaulting, document management, change management, light
geometry with view/markup capabilities for visualization across the Web, parts libraries, and
newly emerging idea management and product-focused environmental compliance
management

Project and portfolio management software used for new product development and
introduction (NPDI)
Beyond these features that form the PLM applications, a comprehensive solution should also include:

Collaboration applications, especially for team collaboration within the enterprise but also with
external business partners

Business performance measurement software to analyze cost efficiencies and search for
process improvements
In addition, depending on their roles, users should have access to a variety of detailed product
information available from the following:

Accounting and human resources

Manufacturing resource planning

Logistics applications such as transportation planning and management and warehousing as
well as return logistics

Retail and wholesale distribution operations management software
The PLM applications market includes only the revenue for the core products that are licensed to
discrete and process manufacturers, enterprise asset management providers, and
architectural/engineering/construction providers. The following functional markets are included in PLM:

Mechanical computer-aided design

Mechanical computer-aided manufacturing

Mechanical computer-aided engineering

Collaborative product data management

Manufacturing
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
Other engineering (excluding electronic design automation [EDA], which will now be tracked
as a separate competitive market)
Services Resource Planning Applications
In addition to the functional breakdown of the enterprise applications market provided by IDC in
multiple subscription research services, IDC provides some vertical views of the same markets. In
particular, businesses that are in the vertical that are project based (deliver a project as the core
component of the business model), instead of product based, need a special variant of enterprise
software to meet key business requirements. In essence, the services resource planning (SRP)
applications are a mirror of the ERP applications but with modified functionality to facilitate the delivery
of a project. Solutions in the professional services vertical are used by the following microverticals:

Accounting

Legal services

Management and IT consulting

Advertising/PR/marketing

Architecture

Engineering services

Construction

Government contracting

Nonprofit/not for profit
In general, SRP applications are application solutions that could, in theory, automate an entire projectbased enterprise and include at least a mix of accounting/financial planning and management,
purchase/sales order processing, project and portfolio management, services-related supply chain,
resource management, client issue management, knowledge management, and project/business
analytics and opportunity management. SRP suites are architected with an integrated set of business
rules and metadata, accessing a single data set (logical or physical) from a single, consistent user
interface. In the IDC view, SRP suites can automate the process of both internal or embedded services
organizations and standalone services businesses.
The SRP applications market is derived from the following functional areas: enterprise asset
management, financial accounting, financial performance and strategy management, human capital
management, order management, other back office, payroll accounting, procurement, project and
portfolio management, collaboration, and services operations management. The percentages of
revenue that the SRP market draws from the previously mentioned functional areas fluctuate every
year, depending on vendors' capabilities and successes in meeting customer and industry-specific
requirements by packaging and implementing appropriate solutions to optimize the biggest business
value. SRP solutions also require deep integration capabilities to CRM solutions.
Representative vendors and SRP products include:

Deltek Vision

NetSuite One World/OpenAir

FinancialForce

Unit4

Microsoft Dynamics
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Digital Commerce Applications
Digital commerce applications facilitate the marketing, research, merchandizing, sales, shopping cart,
order management, transactions and payment processing, inventory, fulfillment, upselling, crossselling, and loyalty functions of B2C, B2B, and B2B2C commerce through digital channels. However, it
does not include the direct procurement of materials used in the manufacturing process — products,
services, or other items purchased through a contracting process or supplier networks — all of which
are included in the procurement market. Digital commerce may also integrate with point-of-sale,
customer service, and other systems to provide sellers of goods and services a complete, omnichannel selling environment that extends from the store Web site to include the physical store, the call
center, and other sales channels.
Digital commerce and its processes are applicable to multiple industries. They include but are not
limited to retail; manufacturing; food and beverage; consumer packaged goods; financial services;
healthcare; travel and transportation; hospitality; software, gaming, and digital media; and
telecommunications.
The digital commerce applications market is derived from the following functional areas: enterprise
portals, search and content analytics, content management, financial accounting, procurement, order
management, inventory, sales, marketing, customer service, and other back office.
Specific functions of digital commerce applications include online store design and management,
product catalog, product information management, content management, merchandizing, pricing,
search and navigation, customer data, loyalty, order capture, payment processing, order fulfillment,
customer service, and social and mobile commerce.
In addition, some vendors are primarily focused on midsize customers and others on small retailers.
However, most vendors have examples of customers outside of their primary market and are actively
working to expand their offerings. Representative vendors and products include:


Vendors focusing on large and midsize customers such as Macy's and Williams-Sonoma:

Demandware Commerce

eBay Enterprise (now known as Radial)

Elastic Path Digital Commerce Suite

Hybris (a SAP company) B2B Commerce and B2C Commerce

NetSuite SuiteCommerce

Oracle Commerce
Vendors focusing on small retailers, including home-based businesses:

BigCommerce

eBay Magento (Community Edition)

Shopify

Volusion eCommerce
Business Commerce Networks
Business commerce networks, sometimes referred to as marketplaces or connected commerce,
leverage the Internet as a transport foundation as well as the whole spectrum of connected devices,
processes, and individuals to form networks that conduct commerce, increase business performance,
reduce costs, and create competitive advantage. Together with communities and enterprise social
networks, business commerce networks are the three pillars of "business networks."
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Business commerce networks connect B2B and B2B2C buyers and sellers of the materials, products,
labor, and services used by businesses of all sizes to process transactions, including ongoing
operations and maintenance. A functioning and connected business commerce network pulls together
all of the stages from strategic sourcing, MRO, and people-centric feedback loops into a seamless
process. For example, a specialized part on an oil rig sends an alert indicating a problem, a
replacement part is automatically ordered and shipped from the manufacturer, and a specialized
maintenance crew (who may be contractors) is scheduled to do the repair and their travel is
automatically booked to the worksite. After the work is completed, invoices are automatically
generated and payments made according to appropriate contracts and service agreements.
Specific functions of business commerce network applications include procurement (direct and
indirect, services, and contract management), human capital management (workforce management),
financial applications (payments, travel, and expense), enterprise asset management, sales (shopping
carts), and marketing (electronic catalogs and storefronts). Note that some of these same markets are
used in the digital commerce competitive market, which focuses on the applications that drive
marketing, selling, buying, payment, and fulfillment of goods and services through digital
marketplaces. There are two primary measurements: software revenue of the applications used to
manage the network (sized by IDC) and the volume of spend that goes through the network (not sized
by IDC).
There are three primary outcomes of business commerce networks:

"Spend optimization" focuses on how the "buyer" manages the business spend on materials,
supplies, products, services, workforce, and more.

"Revenue life-cycle management" focuses on how the "seller" is managing and maximizing its
company revenue through revenue recognition, discounting, price optimization, promotions,
and more.

"Resource optimization" focuses on the operational management of labor, cash, and assets.
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Few, if any, vendors can provide all of the software required by a complete business commerce
network, so ease of integration is an essential requirement. At this time, IDC believes that the following
vendors offer many of the pieces required by business commerce networks:

SAP — financial applications (Concur, Ariba payments), procurement (Ariba, Fieldglass vendor
management), sales and marketing (Hybris), and enterprise asset management

IBM — procurement (Emptoris Supplier Lifecycle Management, Emptoris Sourcing), enterprise
asset management (Maximo Asset Management, TRIRIGA Facilities Management), and
WebSphere Commerce

Oracle — Financial Cloud (expenses), Procurement Cloud, HCM Cloud (workforce
management), Enterprise Asset Management, and Customer Experience Commerce

Infor — Infor Rhythm, Infor Expense Management, Infor Cloudsuite Supplier Exchange, and
Infor EAM Enterprise
On the flip side, the consumer commerce network (i.e., B2C sellers and buyers) covers many of the
same areas, and, in many cases, suppliers of products and services as individuals make vacation
travel purchases, use handyman or other professional services, and maintain and connect significant
assets such as homes and automobiles. At this time, IDC is not describing or sizing the consumer
commerce network.
Electronic Design Automation
EDA software is utilized for designing and producing electronic systems like printed circuit boards
(PCBs) and integrated circuits. The software includes electronic computer-aided design (ECAD),
electronic computer-aided engineering (ECAE), and electronic computer-aided manufacturing
(ECAM). The software bridges the complete electronic systems manufacturing process from initial
design to manufacturing testing and tracks the design and its iterations through the process. The
following are representative vendors and products in this market:

Cadence Incisive Palladium and Allegro Design

Mentor Graphics PADS Suites and MODELSim

Synopsys Innovator and Saber
Application Development and Deployment Software Competitive Markets
Platform as a Service
The platform-as-a-service competitive market includes 100% of the revenue of IT capability in the
application development and deployment primary software market (AD&D, see page 33) plus select
components of the system infrastructure software market (SIS, see page 60), when it is composed and
delivered as a cloud service. PaaS provides integrated (i.e., made up of multiple discrete software
functions) services organized around the tasks of application development and management;
application deployment; code testing, quality, and application life cycle; data management; business
process management; integration; identity and access management; and change and configuration
management, when it is provided as a service delivered through public cloud, or specifically designed
to be included in a private cloud implementation.
When PaaS solutions are designed and offered as private cloud–ready solutions, IT assets are typically
owned and managed by the customer (there are models available for premises-based private cloud
remote management by professional services firms) and dedicated to a single customer. Virtualization
and dynamic scalability can help optimize resource utilization but do not change any of the underlying
assignment of key roles and responsibilities. When PaaS is offered as public cloud, customers use
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shared runtime platform assets, and ownership and management of the platform transitions from the
customer to the service provider, and the use of platform capabilities is presumed to be shared.
Public cloud PaaS is packaged as configurable, turnkey offerings sold directly from IP
owners/providers, cloud OEM partners/service providers, systems integrators, and a variety of other
mechanisms. When offered with underlying infrastructure, PaaS frequently includes access to system
infrastructure capability such as workload automation, scheduling, change and configuration
management, storage management, security, and network management.
Whether designed for public cloud or private cloud, all PaaS, at a minimum, must conform to IDC's
eight basic cloud characteristics:

Solution packaged

Shared/standard services

Elastic resource scaling

Self-service

Elastic, term-based pricing (no perpetual license)

Ubiquitous (authorized) network access

Standard UI technologies

Published service interface/API
In addition, cloud services, whether public services or private cloud implementations, built to run from
customer datacenters must also offer automated provisioning and offer the capability for serving
multiple tenants (or internal customers/business units, in the case of private clouds) with the same
compute instance. Cloud services must also provide support for life-cycle management.
PaaS is segmented into five competitive submarkets that recognize how PaaS is composed and
delivered in the cloud. These competitive submarkets are combinations of the whole or parts of
existing AD&D functional software markets that reflect the most prevalent combinations of integrated
functionality based on customer use case and the most typical supplier offerings in addition to other
market factors such as the primary problem being solved by cloud application platforms (CAPs).
Cloud Application Platforms
CAPs provide a set of abstracted services and tooling focused on application deployment, and, which
have a high level of commonality and relevance to the deployment of almost any application,
regardless of platform. A CAP enables the deployment of an application as well as managing its
ongoing operation using configuration, orchestration, and security tools. These cloud-based tools can
be delivered as either a pre-integrated platform or a suite of tools.
Cloud application platforms also facilitate the deployment of applications that automate and manage
business processes in the cloud. This business process capability in the platform allows enterprises to
orchestrate strategic process improvement initiatives (human task and system-to-system automation)
as well as management of cases. It increasingly involves automated opportunity and problem
detection and coordination across larger end-to-end processes, spanning multiple applications inside a
single enterprise datacenter, across datacenters, in the cloud, and with business partners. These
platforms also coordinate and manage cross-border processes (multiple languages and time zones)
and complex integration scenarios that may involve legacy custom or packaged applications, a variety
of data sources, and/or Web services. This capability includes the full spectrum of software that is
associated with modern process automation when delivered as a service, including user interaction
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software (including portals and forms); data capture software to automate data collection from
nondigital forms; business process modeling software; orchestration or workflow software that moves
people, documents, and data through a process; rules engine software that automates decision points
within a process; and queuing software that determines who is assigned to a task and sends the task
to the appropriate person.
To deliver an integrated set of tools that support deployment, a CAP must minimally include the
following capabilities:

Native or third-party user interaction and deployment

Native or third-party orchestration of business processes and managed deployment of
developed objects and artifacts

Native service interface(s) for interoperability with external services

Management services that control access to the enterprise application and how the application
leverages system infrastructure (Management services can include capabilities like high
availability, provisioning, dynamic scalability, service-level agreements, chargeback and
billing, and management of selected multitenancy capabilities that are particularly important to
cloud implementations.)
The CAP competitive submarket draws from the following functional markets as referenced in Table 6:

Deployment-centric application platforms

Model-driven application platforms

Distributed cache services manager
The following are representative vendors and services in this category:

Apprenda

Docker

Engine Yard

Fujitsu Cloud Platform

Google — Google Cloud Platform (App Engine and Container Engine)

HPE — Helion (Testing and CloudFoundry offerings)

IBM (Bluemix)

Mendix

Mesosphere

Microsoft Azure

MIOsoft — MIOedge

Red Hat (OpenShift)

VMware/EMC — Pivotal CF

salesforce.com — Force.com, Heroku, and Salesforce1

WS02

Zoho
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Cloud Integration Services
The cloud integration services competitive submarket involves the use of a cloud-based broker to
support and service the manual or automated exchange of structured messages and files between two
or more clouds, between a cloud offering and a private datacenter, or between two or more parties.
Integration and orchestration cloud middleware includes services available in the cloud used by
developers, business analysts, and technology operations teams to integrate cloud and on-premise
applications, exchange business transactions between trading partners, transfer files within and
between clouds and organizations, publish and process events, and monitor the business performance
of cloud-based applications and systems. Organizations frequently deliver files and messages to CIS
providers via gateway software, connectors, and appliances located on-premise. While CIS offerings
support manual delivery of files via browsers and also provide the ability for users to manually enter
transactions from Web forms, the majority of traffic and spending supports straight-through integration
to:

Exchange business-to-business transactions between two or more organizations.

Synchronize data and content between cloud offerings.

Synchronize data between cloud offerings and on-premise systems of record, data
warehouses, and data stores.
CIS offerings are evolving from:

Business-to-business networks

The automated services associated with B2B-managed services

Cloud enablement of integration software that was formerly used inside an organization

Pure-play cloud start-ups in business to exchange data or content
CIS excludes software and appliance spending for integration activities within a single cloud location or
between a private datacenter and a cloud offering, where there is no cloud-based intermediary.
The CIS competitive submarket revenue draws from the following functional markets as referenced in
Table 6:

Business-to-business middleware

Integration middleware

Event-driven middleware

Managed file transfer software

Data integration and integrity software

Distributed cache services manager
The following are representative vendors and services in this category:

Actian — DataConnect

Amazon — Simple Queue Service

Dell — Boomi

IBM — Cast Iron

Informatica — Integration Platform as a Service

MuleSoft — Anypoint Platform
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
SnapLogic

TIBCO — Cloud Bus
Cloud Data Services
Bringing together data from a variety of on-premise and cloud sources to deliver business value
through analytics leveraging Big Data technology is a key benefit of this platform. A cloud-delivered
data platform helps companies keep up with growth of data without overwhelming their on-premise
datacenters.
Cloud data services allow users to define, create, and manage one or more databases or database
instances that they then consume via a public cloud or implement via a private cloud. Data isolation
allows for multiple tenants' data architectures to reside in shared database instances. The subscriber
defines, loads, and accesses the database and can tune the database. The subscriber can allocate
related resources, such as servers and storage, on a virtual and dynamic basis, and the server and
storage volume names and locations are abstracted.
A database that is provided as part of an application (either transactional or analytical) that is offered
as SaaS or as part of another PaaS offering is not CDS, as the subscriber in this non-CDS situation
accesses the data through the subscribed application or service, but not directly; the subscriber does
not control the database per se, although the subscriber may be able to access such a database
through SQL.
A CDS may be offered as standalone or hybrid as part of another PaaS with application development
and life-cycle management tools, integration capabilities, or other public cloud services.
The CDS competitive submarket draws from the following functional markets as referenced in Table 6:

End-user query, reporting, and analysis

Advanced and predictive analytics software

Relational database management systems

Nonrelational database management systems

Data integration and integrity software

Distributed cache services managers

Database development and management tools
The following are representative vendors and services in this category:

Actian — Actian Analytics Platform

Amazon — RDS, Redshift

Continuuity (now known as Cask)

Google — Cloud SQL, BigQuery

IBM — Cloudant

Microsoft — Azure SQL Database

Pivotal — Big Data Suite
Cloud Application Development and Life-Cycle Services
Cloud application development and life-cycle services provide a set of abstracted services and tooling
to facilitate the development and enable the deployment of an application, as well as managing its
ongoing operation. These tools can be delivered as either a pre-integrated platform or a suite of tools
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that together address cloud-based application development (e.g., cloud IDEs), deployment, code
analysis, testing, quality, software configuration, and change and process management. Testing is
required to ensure that applications built using multiple services meet business expectations and is
increasingly included as a function of CADLS.
CADLS typically provide the following capabilities:

Native or third-party user interaction within development and deployment

Native or third-party support for one or more application development patterns (process
centric, decision, framework centric, composite, or model centric) (CADLS may be developed
in any of other styles or in a mix.)

Native or third-party support for life-cycle management

Native service interface(s) for interoperability with external services

Management services that control access to the enterprise application and how the application
leverages system infrastructure (Management services can include capabilities like high
availability, provisioning, dynamic scalability, service-level agreements, chargeback and
billing, and management of selected multitenancy capabilities that are particularly important to
cloud implementations.)
The CADLS competitive submarket draws from the following functional markets as referenced in Table
6:

Development languages, environments, and tools

Modeling and architecture tools

Automated software quality tools

Software configuration, change, and process management

Software construction components

Business rules management software (BMRS)
The following are representative vendors and services in this category:

Atlassian — Bamboo

CA Technologies

CloudBees

Cloud9 IDE

Compuware — APM for Cloud

IBM Bluemix

Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 on Azure

Rally Software

SOASTA
Other Cloud Platform Services
Other cloud platform services (OCPSs) include IT capability from the remaining functional markets
within the application development and deployment primary market, which is not contained in the
submarkets mentioned previously. OCPS contains revenue in whole or part from the following AD&D
functional software markets:

Spatial information management
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
Transaction processing monitors
OCPS also includes IT capability from other AD&D functional markets that do not 100% map to the
cloud platform types named previously, and several AD&D functional markets may have revenue in
OCPS. Table 6 provides a high-level mapping of AD&D and systems infrastructure (SIS) software
functional markets to PaaS submarkets.
TABLE 6
Mapping of Functional Markets to PaaS Submarkets
Primary
Segment
Functional Market
Cloud
Application
Platforms
Cloud
Integration
Services
Cloud
Data
Services
Cloud
Development
and Life-Cycle
Services
AD&D
Development languages, environments,
and tools
X
AD&D
Automated software quality (ASQ) tools
X
AD&D
Software change, configuration, and
process management
X
AD&D
Deployment-centric application platforms
X
AD&D
Model-driven application platforms
X
AD&D
End-user query, reporting, and analysis
X
AD&D
Advanced and predictive analytics
software
X
AD&D
Relational database management
systems
X
AD&D
Nonrelational database management
systems
X
AD&D
Modeling and architecture tools
AD&D
Data integration and integrity software
AD&D
Distributed cache services managers
AD&D
Database development and
management tools
AD&D
Business-to-business middleware
X
AD&D
Integration middleware
X
AD&D
Event-driven middleware
X
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Platform
Services
X
X
X
X
X
X
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TABLE 6
Mapping of Functional Markets to PaaS Submarkets
Cloud
Application
Platforms
Cloud
Integration
Services
Cloud
Data
Services
Cloud
Development
and Life-Cycle
Services
Primary
Segment
Functional Market
AD&D
Managed file transfer software
AD&D
Transaction processing monitors
AD&D
Business rules management
X
AD&D
Software construction components
X
AD&D
Spatial information management
SIS
Identity and access management
X
SIS
Change and configuration management
X
SIS
Operating systems and subsystems
X
SIS
Software-defined compute
X
Other Cloud
Platform
Services
X
X
X
Source: IDC, 2016
Business Process Management Software
This competitive market looks at software associated with developing and deploying applications that
automate and manage business processes. This covers the full spectrum of software that is
associated with modern process automation, including:

User interaction software, including portals and forms

Data capture software to automate data collection from nondigital forms

Business process modeling software

Orchestration or workflow software that moves people, documents, and data through a
process

Decision automation software that triggers a workflow or case creation as well as automates
decision points within a process

Queuing software that determines who is assigned to a task and sends the task to the
appropriate person

Search software that allows workers within the process to find related content needed as part
of a step in the process

Data integration, reporting, and monitoring software that integrates data and presents both
historical and current information on a screen

Integration software that allows the necessary enterprise systems to share data
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The BPM competitive market contains revenue from a variety of functional markets. The primary ones
include application server middleware, integration and process automation middleware, business rules
management systems, authoring and publishing software, content management, enterprise portals,
and search and discovery.
Vendors covered include IBM, Pegasystems, Appian, Bonitasoft, Nintex, K2, Red Hat, TIBCO, and
Software AG.
Cloud Testing/ASQ PaaS
The cloud testing/ASQ PaaS market is a competitive market representing the platform-as-a-service
portion of the ASQ functional market. To qualify as a PaaS solution, the offering is provided by a thirdparty, offsite provider and is not deployed internally by the end user. It is also required to support the
majority of the following attributes:

It is a shared one-to-many service built for a public market, not for a single customer. (We also
see the emergence of private cloud and hybrid cloud testing solutions.)

It is provided as a "turnkey" solution that integrates required resources.

It provides dynamic, fine-grained service "scaling" associated with the needs of the business,
the numbers of users, and so forth.

It supports user-oriented pricing, utilization, and cost tracking.

It enables self-service provisioning with cloud testing (although some onboarding may be
necessary with staff support for more complex customizations).
Cloud testing/ASQ PaaS offerings often bundle hardware, services, and software licenses into an
annual (or sometimes monthly) subscription fee — though in some cases, the user may license the
software separately from the supporting infrastructure and services. Testing is particularly well suited
to a cloud delivery model given the need to mirror production systems with appropriate infrastructure to
support consistent, well-managed, quality approaches. IDC's estimates for this market include all
revenue associated with the delivery of services that support the functionality described previously.
Representative examples of such vendors and products include:

Compuware

HP

IBM

Microsoft

SOASTA
Embedded Database Management Systems
Embedded DBMSs are DBMSs that have their licensing and maintenance agreements embedded in
those of third-party products. They require no manual database administration and are usually invisible
to the end user, with management functions handled either automatically or through an API, so that the
applications or tools in which they are embedded can handle them in the context of normal product
operation. They are typically designed and tuned for performance and small footprint rather than
flexibility or ease of use (because they have no visible user interface). This competitive market cuts
across the RDBMS and nonrelational DBMS functional markets.
Embedded DBMS markets are derived as that fraction of DBMS revenue wherein the revenue is
realized by indirect sales of runtime licenses through tools or applications in which the technology is
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embedded, as well as licenses and maintenance agreements for database development systems and
tools used by third-party ISVs embedding the DBMS technology in their software products. Note that
some DBMS offerings may be sold in some cases as exposed DBMS technology that is not embedded
in any product and in other cases as embedded DBMS. For those offerings, an estimated ratio of
embedded versus nonembedded revenue is used to calculate the revenue included in this market. In
addition to leading DBMS products that are sold as either exposed or embedded, there are others that
are designed to be embedded. Representative examples of such vendors and products include:

Caché (NDBMS) from InterSystems

db4o (NDBMS) from Versant

Progress RDBMS (RDBMS) from Progress Software

PSQL (RDBMS) from Pervasive Software
DevOps
DevOps involves the exercise of management authority over development and deployment. DevOps
encompasses end-to-end software execution from inception and requirements, across the IT project
and IT program portfolio life cycle in coordination with the IT asset portfolio (including systems,
infrastructure, and previously deployed applications) through to release management, operations, and
support. "DevOps" literally seeks to bridge the gap between software development and operations but
must encompass more than mere release management to be effective. Given the need for speedy,
agile development and deployment across multiple platforms (encompassing mobile, social, cloud,
and Big Data), IDC sees organizations increasingly seeking to bridge the long-standing divide between
development and operations teams and processes. IT projects include general-purpose software
development and implementation initiatives as well as programs for regulatory compliance. The
DevOps software market measures the technologies that implement functional capabilities, processes,
and organizational strategies to enable effective collaboration, visibility, and DevOps management
across groups, including IT developers and operational staff, giving visibility to executives and
business users for effective software initiation through to deployment and support. DevOps
approaches are increasingly being incorporated into and coordinated with application life-cycle
management, including release management and IT service management and service virtualization
strategies, as organizations seek to plan for effective software deployment and management
strategies in dynamic, agile environments.
The DevOps competitive market draws from the software configuration, change and process
management, the automated software quality and project and portfolio management functional
markets, and the system management software secondary market.
Examples of vendors in this market include CA Technologies, Chef, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Plutora,
Puppet, and Serena.
Agile Application Life-Cycle Management Software
This competitive market looks at software associated with automating agile approaches to managing
projects. Primarily in use for developing software (with emerging support in the business), we see Agile
being leveraged to increase speed to delivery of key capabilities with working software. To count as an
"agile" provider, functionality must be offered as part of the vendor product portfolio that is distinctly
agile, such as support for functional capabilities (burn down charts, user stories, epics, backlogs, etc.)
and processes (Kanban, Lean, Scrum, XP, etc.).
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The functional markets that feed this competitive market include software change, configuration, and
process management software, where the majority of current agile providers have their revenue, and
project and portfolio management, resulting from the evolution of PPM providers targeting agile
support and automated software quality, given increased adoption of agile testing and process and
released functionality for that support.
Examples of providers of agile products include Atlassian, CA Technologies, CollabNet, HP, IBM,
Microsoft, Rally, ThoughtWorks, and VersionOne.
IoT Analytics and Information Management
IoT is a core initiative of digital transformation that provides a means for enterprises to improve
customer service, improve operational efficiency, and grow through innovation by offering physical
products as digital services or by creating new digital services that harness and supplement data
generated from sensors attached to physical things.
Analytics and information management software are used to:

Transport sensor and supplemental data.

Manage and organize relevant data in repositories.

Preprocess data to translate and normalize before sending to systems that automate decisions
or train decision models.

Automate decisions through the use of streaming analytics and other decision automation
techniques to continuously analyze new data to detect or predict conditions that warrant
responses.

Feed relevant information and predictions into applications used to assist in knowledge worker
decision management.

Provide on-demand access to real-time decision services used in IoT-related applications.

Monitor incoming sensor data and processing status.

Provide visibility to end users querying about the status of running decision models.
IoT-based assets are created and managed using analytics and information management software to:
Construct and train decision models, develop and improve algorithms used to detect or predict
conditions that warrant further action, develop and executive optimization routines, provide querying
capabilities for access to historical IoT-related data, and close the loop between actions taken to solve
IoT-related problems and the decision models used to make predictions and recommendations.
The market for IoT analytics and information management is the sum of the spending on licenses,
maintenance, and subscriptions for software used to feed in sensor and supplemental data, automate
decisions, provide decision support, build and manage information and decision models required for
IoT initiatives, monitor the performance of IoT-based processes and applications, and provide ondemand access and visibility to in-process production systems and historical data.
Please refer to the Business Analytics competitive market and the Integration and Orchestration
Middleware software definitions for specific descriptions of software types that IDC includes in the IoT
analytics and information management software market.
Master Data Management
Master data management is the set of practices and automated processes to create and maintain a
common single view of business entities, such as customers, products, locations, and accounts, that
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must be shared across systems. These processes are coordinated through a physical or logical hub or
broker, with rules regarding policies and procedures for access, update, and overall management of
this central resource and metadata model and its coordination with other participating systems across
the enterprise or, in some cases, across enterprises. The management of master data may include its
compilation from various application databases, control and auditing of its access, synchronization of
master data with data in various application databases, versioning and archiving of master data,
quality assurance, and more. Master data management solutions may be designed to support either
analytical or operational purposes, and they may be implemented via varied configurations as to where
the physical and reference data may be stored.
Master data management is an evolving discipline that is expanding beyond the practices of
rationalizing data elements across an organization to incorporate or integrate with broader goals
related to data governance and enterprise information life-cycle management.
The overall master data management competitive market consists of the sum of the following
submarkets:

Applied MDM software. Applied MDM software includes the following categories of purposebuilt applications for managing specific classes of master data:

Product. Software used to coordinate and manage a common view of product master data,
often involving information on product definitions, bill of materials, catalogs, and suppliers
(Many products are marketed in this category as product information management [PIM]
solutions.)

Party. Software used to coordinate and manage a common view of party data, most often
aligned with customer (although it may be used for other "party"-oriented views including
citizen, employee, and patient) across multiple systems (Many products are marketed in
this category as customer data integration [CDI], or customer information system [CIS]
solutions.)

Other domain specific. Other categories of specific entities to be managed include but are
not limited to the following examples:
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Location. Software used in the definition and maintenance of base/reference
geospatial data for entities that need to be shared across multiple systems (This
includes objects such as streets, buildings, rivers, legal/administrative constructs like
state boundaries, oilfields, or stores.)

Financial. Specialized software for developing and maintaining a single unified chart of
accounts mapped to multiple existing financial systems, often used to support a
consolidation process for integrated reporting and performance management

Order. Software designed to manage master data often related to complex and longrunning order and contract processing dimensions

Asset. Specialized software for managing items and associated attributes

Industry. Software designed to manage pertinent master data entities relevant to a
specific industry (e.g., telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, retail, or financial
services)

Reference data. Software used to coordinate and manage a finite set of allowable
values aligned with a value domain; this is often applied to time zones, countries and
subdivisions, currencies, units of measurement, or proprietary codes used within an
organization (Domains can also be industry specific such as medical codes, SWIFT
BIC codes, and ACORD ICD codes.)
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
Multidomain MDM software. Sometimes referred to as enterprise MDM, multidomain MDM
software is purpose designed to address master data management beyond a single type of
master data and will typically be positioned for use across varied types of application and
entity domains.

MDM infrastructure software. MDM infrastructure software supports and enhances the
processes involved in establishing and maintaining master data, structured or unstructured,
including:

MDM data services. Software related to data integration (such as data movement and
replication), hierarchy management, metadata management, data quality (such as
cleansing and profiling), and enrichment tasks specifically configured for use in an MDM
context (Software used to support the creation and management of a hub or data
warehouse used specifically within an MDM topology, operational or analytical, is included
in this category.)

MDM content services. Software aimed at creating central knowledge bases (such as
categorization tools, taxonomy builders, clustering engines, or entity, concept, and
relationship extractors) and for mapping new or existing unstructured information to the
content master data or to related structured data
The following are representative vendors that offer products to enable MDM:

IBM (IBM InfoSphere MDM Server and IBM WebSphere Product Center)

Oracle (Data Relationship Management, Customer Hub, Product Hub, and Supplier Hub)

SAP (SAP NetWeaver MDM coupled with SAP Data Services)

Informatica (Multidomain MDM and Product Information Management)

TIBCO (TIBCO MDM)

Orchestra Networks (EBX5)
Mobile Testing
This market focuses on ASQ capabilities specifically targeting mobile platform and device testing as
well as application functional testing, associated processes, and capabilities. Products are emerging
from key third-party providers, partnerships with third parties, and organic evolution of capabilities from
leading existing ASQ providers.
Representative examples of such vendors and products include:

Gorilla Logic

Keynote DeviceAnywhere

Perfecto Mobile

HP

IBM

Sauce Labs
Requirements Visualization, Definition, and Management
Requirements visualization, definition, and management software is a competitive segment of the
overall SCCPM market. Since we have also seen the close evolution of requirements with automated
software quality, and IDC's competitive markets enable revenue to be pulled in from multiple markets,
we are now also including revenue from the ASQ functional market. For requirements definition,
vendors in this competitive market category provide products that enable users to elicit, specify,
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analyze, and validate requirements, typically through an iterative process that includes business
stakeholders and technology staff. Requirements management enables users to track progress and
trace evolution of requirement creation from software development through to production testing.
Products in this overall category range from "traditional" requirements management tools to
requirements automation products with simulation, visualization, and/or storyboarding capabilities to
facilitate communication between business stakeholders and developers. As requirements
visualization becomes a first step for more organizations seeking initial visibility with burgeoning
growth of mobile apps and rapid turnaround times (as one example), we have renamed the market to
include visualization to more clearly reflect this trend. (SCCPM tools are used by application
development organizations to provide software revision control and versioning capabilities. More
sophisticated functions such as process management, change request tracking, requirements
management, and distributed team development support may also be included.)
Representative examples of such vendors and products include:

iRise

Blueprint

HP

IBM
Software Quality Analysis and Measurement
The software quality analysis and measurement market is a competitive market covering the following
functional markets: automated software quality and some revenue from security and vulnerability
management (SVM).
It consists of software tools that enable organizations to observe, measure, and evaluate software
complexity, size, productivity, and risk. These tools are employed by a range of users — developers,
architects, DBAs, project managers, CXOs and application owners, outsourcers, security/compliance
specialists, and others.
Examples of capabilities provided by these software analysis tools include architectural assessment of
design consequences (on software performance, stability, adaptability, and maintainability); static
analysis; dynamic analysis; quality metrics for complexity, size, risk, and productivity to establish
baselines and help judge project progress and resource capabilities; and application portfolio
evaluation through understanding the impact of architectural flaws and dependencies and in-phase
prevention of additional software problems not easily observable through typical ASQ tools.
Revenue for this market comes primarily from the ASQ functional market but also includes some
revenue from the software vulnerability and management security market. We see increasing
confluence across both the quality and the security areas and encourage our users to coordinate
across both (to improve up-front processes and hygiene).
Representative examples of such vendors and products include:

CAST Software

Coverity

HP

IBM

Klocwork
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
Parasoft
Mobile Enterprise Application Development Platforms
Mobile enterprise application platforms (MEAPs) describe a competitive market with revenue relating
to various secondary markets within the application development and deployment primary market.
These secondary markets primarily include application development software and application
platforms, as well as some components of integration and orchestration middleware and quality and
life-cycle tools.
The MADP market represents a conglomeration of technologies that businesses leverage to build,
integrate, and deploy mobile applications. While the early days of the market were dominated by
companies playing in the mobile enterprise application platform space, the landscape has broadened
to include vendors originally hailing from desktop and Web development backgrounds as well.
Traditional MEAPs were born in an era when mobility was largely fenced off and restricted to a single
division or a group of enterprise workers, such as sales or field forces, and required limited and welldefined interface points to existing applications in the enterprise. However, these platforms have
evolved greatly over time and today are often times priced and licensed as modular offerings, where
the organization can choose to leverage the full platform or various components thereof.
While it is difficult to categorize such a complex market into succinct submarkets, we have segmented
the market into four categories that we believe capture the majority of key vendors playing in the space
today. In general, we see two categories of vendors that offer end-to-end approaches that include both
client-side and server-side components. We have categorized those hailing from a traditional MEAP or
mobile-first background into the first category, mobile enterprise application platforms. The other major
category of vendor that offers this end-to-end platform type typically builds model-driven Web
development technology that has adapted this for the mobile platform. These vendors are included in
the end-to-end model-driven application platforms category. In addition, there are vendors that focus
primarily on client-side development tools or server-side integration and deployment platforms. These
are represented by the front-end model-driven platforms and tools and back-end application services
segments, respectively. While we have placed each vendor in the category that we believe most
accurately maps to the sum of its mobile application development portfolio, it is important to remember
that vendors that offer componentized offerings may be competing across multiple spaces below.
Representative vendors in each category include:

Mobile enterprise application platforms. IBM MobileFirst Platform, Oracle Mobile Suite, Verivo
Akula, Pega Application Mobility Platform (AMP), Kony Mobility Platform, SAP Mobile
Platform, Globo GO!AppZone MADP Platform, and Appcelerator Platform

Front-end model-driven platforms and tools. Appcelerator Titanium, Embarcadero RAD Studio
XE8, RubyMotion, Motorola Solutions RhoMobile, Digita Qt, and Adobe PhoneGap and AIR

End-to-end model-driven application platforms. Offerings from Magic Software, Mendix,
OutSystems, Salesforce, 4D Wakanda, Servoy, LiveCode, Capriza, Red Hat FeedHenry,
Exadel Appery.io, Gupta Technologies TD Mobile, and Alpha Anywhere

Back-end application services. Facebook Parse, AnyPresence, KidoZen, CloudMine, Kinvey,
Backendless, FatFractal, Built.io, Kii, and Google Firebase
IT Asset Management Software
IT asset management software is typically used for IT hardware or software inventory and corporate IT
asset value management. Functions include:
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
Discovery/inventory. Discovery/inventory is the initial discovery of hardware and software
within the environment. This discovery includes hardware and software and can include
network assets such as routers and switches, as well as servers, desktop, laptop, handheld,
and remote devices. The discovered inventory information is maintained in an actionable
database.

License management. License management monitors and controls the total company seats of
software for acquiring and managing the company's software and its allocation.

Software metering. Software metering is the monitoring and control of software licenses for the
purpose of determining specific individuals authorized to have access to software, either from
a device standpoint or from a person standpoint.

Planning and support. This includes infrastructure planning and support for other primary
value-added functions such as IT help desk.
Representative vendors and products include the following:

HPE Asset Manager and HPE Client Automation (portions thereof)

The Attachmate Group's Novell ZENworks Asset Management

Microsoft Asset Inventory Services and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager
(portions thereof)

IBM Tivoli Endpoint Configuration Manager powered by BigFix
Enterprise Mobility Management Software
Enterprise mobility management (EMM) is a competitive software market that pulls revenue from
various enterprise systems management, security, and content management markets. EMM offerings
include capabilities that enable the secure management of devices, applications, and content within a
mobile computing context.
A mobile device management solution includes many of the standard features included in PC
management solutions but also includes additional functionality that addresses the unique needs of
mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In its current incarnation, the EMM market is not
meant to capture the entire IoT device management opportunity; however, a portion of the IoT device
management market may be included where existing EMM vendors broaden out their platforms to
support additional device types. Some of the key features of a mobile device management solution
are:

Device provisioning and management configuration settings

Inventory/asset management

Software distribution (applications, OS, firmware updates)

Remote wipe/lock and remote control for systems diagnostics

Policy/compliance management (encryption management, device posture, etc.)

Authentication and certificate management

Real-time device monitoring, location information, and GPS tracking

Reporting and analytics on devices
Mobile application management refers to a solution by which specific mobile applications can be
managed, secured, and distributed by IT organizations and typically allows for enhanced policies to be
applied to individual applications or a grouping of apps. Mobile application management solutions can
either supplement MDM functionality or function as standalone offerings. Common functionality
included within MAM include enterprise app storefronts, containers, and app wrapping.
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Mobile content management solutions for the enterprise provide IT with a secure way to provide
access to files/content/data sitting in various data stores to mobile devices. Such solutions may also
provide mechanisms to securely collaborate on this content as well. These products allow IT to
manage who gets access to what information and may tie in with other back-end or mobile-specific
policy systems. Preventing data loss is a key goal of these products, and they do so by providing IT
with a mechanism to control data flow in and out of the secured app and secure communication
between apps. These solutions assist with compliance and governance by offering reporting on user
activity with mobile content. Mobile content management solutions may be either cloud based or onpremise based and may also provide access to content that is in the cloud or behind the firewall.
Representative vendors in the mobile enterprise management software market include the following:

AirWatch by VMware (AirWatch EMM)

Citrix (XenMobile)

Good Technology (now owned by BlackBerry) (Good Mobility Suite)

IBM (IBM MobileFirst Protect)

MobileIron (MobileIron EMM)

BlackBerry (BES)
Mobile Enterprise Security Software
Mobile security can be defined as products designed or optimized to provide security specifically for
devices within the mobile environment, including smartphones, tablets, and other devices running
mobile operating systems. The mobile enterprise security market is a competitive market that pulls
revenue from multiple functional markets within the security software secondary market. The majority
of the vendors participating in the enterprise mobility management market also contribute a portion of
revenue to the mobile enterprise security software market; however, the mobile security opportunity is
broader than what is derived from the EMM market alone. The mobile enterprise security market is the
standalone mobile security opportunity combined with the portion of EMM software functionality that is
security focused.
The mobile enterprise security software market is segmented into the following submarkets:

Mobile threat management (MTM) includes antimalware (which includes antivirus and
antispyware), antispam, intrusion prevention, and firewalls for mobile devices.

Mobile information protection and control (MIPC) solutions provide data protection.
Components include file, full disk, or application encryption for mobile devices and nonencryption data loss prevention technologies. Virtual data partitioning, either by hypervisor or
containers, is also included in this category.

Mobile gateway access and protection (MGAP) provides device control and policy
enforcement at the gateway layer. This market covers not just software that resides on mobile
devices (VPN clients) but also the infrastructure (SSL VPN, network access control, and
similar components) products that are designed to support mobile devices.

Mobile security and vulnerability management (MSVM) solutions provide a wide range of
security policy and vulnerability functions associated with mobile devices. Solutions here set
mobile device security policy and monitor compliance against the policy. Products in this
category are used to set, monitor, and update device configuration parameters, establish
vulnerability status, and perform device wipe and device lockdown when a device is lost.
Management consoles in this area are used to report on overall mobile security status.
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Application vulnerability scanning and application reputation are also included within this
category.

Mobile identity and access management (MIAM) solutions provide authentication and
authorization technologies (such as PKI certificates, SSL certificates, and password
management) for transactions conducted from mobile devices and that support network
access for mobile devices. Single sign-on and provisioning of mobile devices are included.

Other mobile security (OMS) covers emerging security functions such as antitheft/antifraud
that are not already captured within existing markets.
Representative vendors include Symantec, Intel (McAfee), Cisco, Kaspersky Lab, IBM Security, Check
Point, and Trend Micro.
Software Distribution
Software distribution primarily focuses on moving an application or operating environment to a new
user location. Functions include packaging, distributing, installing, and updating an application or
operating environment. Not included are content management or products such as those for bulk data
transfer, mirroring and failover, and distributed file system managers. Representative vendors and
products include the following:

CA Technologies (Client Manager)

HPE Client Automation (portions thereof)

IBM Tivoli Configuration Manager and Tivoli Endpoint Manager powered by BigFix

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 and previous versions

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
LEARN MORE
Related Research

IDC's Worldwide IT Channels and Alliances Taxonomy, 2016 (IDC #US41460116, June 2016)

IDC's Worldwide Services Taxonomy, 2016 (IDC #US41098116, April 2016)

IDC's Worldwide Governance, Risk, and Compliance Software Taxonomy, 2016 (IDC
#US41144216, March 2016)

IDC's Worldwide Security Products Taxonomy, 2015 (IDC #256755, June 2015)

IDC's Worldwide Storage Software Taxonomy, 2015 (IDC #256418, June 2015)

IDC's Software Taxonomy, 2015 (IDC #256767, June 2015)
Appendix: IDC's Software Market Forecast and Analysis Methodology
The purpose of this appendix is to provide an overview of the methodology employed by IDC's
software analysts for collecting, analyzing, and reporting revenue data for the categories defined by
the software taxonomy.
IDC's industry analysts have been measuring and forecasting IT markets for more than 40 years. IDC's
software industry analysts have been delivering analysis and prognostications for commercial software
markets for more than 25 years.
The market forecast and analysis methodology incorporates information from five different but
interrelated sources, as follows:
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
Reported and observed trends and financial activity. This includes reported revenue data for
public companies.

IDC's software vendor interviews and surveys. IDC interviews and/or surveys significant
market participants to determine product revenue, revenue demographics, pricing, and other
relevant information.

Product briefings, press releases, and other publicly available information. IDC's software
analysts around the world meet with hundreds of software vendors each year. These briefings
provide an opportunity to review current and future business and product strategies, revenue,
shipments, customer bases, target markets, and other key product and competitive
information.

Vendor financial statements and related filings. Although many software vendors are privately
held and choose to limit financial disclosures, information from publicly held companies
provides a significant benchmark for assessing informal market estimates from private
companies. IDC also builds detailed information related to private companies through in-depth
analyst relationships and maintains an extensive library of financial and corporate information
focused on the IT industry. We further maintain detailed revenue by product area model on
more than 1,000 worldwide vendors.

IDC demand-side research. This includes interviews with business users of software solutions
annually and provides a fifth perspective for assessing competitive performance and market
dynamics. Direct conversations with technology buyers provide an invaluable complement to
the broader survey-based results.
Ultimately, the data presented in IDC's software studies and pivot tables represents our best estimates
based on the previously mentioned data sources as well as reported and observed activity by vendors
and further modeling of data that we believe to be true to fill in any information gaps.
Company Revenue Modeling

Public company revenue models tie to SEC-reported revenue or other legal public agencies
outside the United States (at least at the total company level and often at more granular levels
when available). Note, however, that companies may report revenue that is allocated
differently than the categorization employed in IDC's software revenue models. For example,
portions of "services" or "maintenance" revenue reported by companies may be included as
commercial software revenue by IDC's definitions.

Further segmentations such as geographic region and operating environment distribution
percentages are generally obtained from companies at a high level (e.g., the primary market
level) and are prorated to individual markets. However, for large companies that have wide
variations in geographic and/or operating environment allocations across different markets,
these allocations are maintained at the secondary or functional market level whenever that
level of detail can be obtained.
Revenue Recognition
Software companies and other companies with software revenue vary in the manner in which they
recognize revenue from commercial software sales for reporting purposes, although U.S. public
companies are constrained by U.S. accounting practice standards. This is important because IDC's
revenue information for companies and for software markets is based on recognized revenue as
defined in U.S. practice rather than on bookings, which is another measure. (In the case of private
companies, IDC assumes they are using standards that are similar to public companies for their
internal accounting.)
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For accounting purposes, what matters is revenue, and this is what IDC uses as its metric for the
software industry. One reason is that there is a reasonably consistent set of methodologies for
determining what is revenue and what is not. These methodologies hinge on the issue of how
bookings become "recognized" as revenue. In general, IDC bases its reporting of, and forecasts for,
the software market based on revenue as defined by GAAP (to the extent that this is possible for nonU.S. companies).
The first requirement for the recognition of revenue for accounting purposes is whether the actual
payment has been received (either directly from the customer or from a distributor or other agent) or
whether a contract has been received that obligates the buyer to future payment. Once the booking
has been deemed to be recognizable, the issue becomes one of how much may be recognized
immediately and how much must or may be deferred and recognized in future periods. There are three
basic methods of recognizing revenue: immediate recognition, deferred recognition, and subscription
revenue.
Immediate Recognition
Under this method, a company immediately recognizes all the value of a customer's purchase of
software. In this case, a booking is turned almost immediately into recognized revenue. If a limitedterm license is booked and there are no other contingencies or future deliverables (such as technical
support) under the terms, then the total booking may also be recognized immediately.
Deferred Recognition
In practice, it is usual to negotiate mainframe and other large enterprise contracts as limited-term
contracts with software "maintenance" and support provisions. Maintenance in the software sense
means the right to "bug fixes," minor updates, and functionality improvements (what are called "point
releases"), among other things. Here, the software company typically records the total value of the
booking of a new or renewed long-term software right-to-use contract by amortizing the part
associated with software maintenance over the life of the contract and then recognizing the remainder
as immediate revenue.
A company may choose to report revenue recognized in the period as a total or may choose to break it
out as license revenue versus maintenance revenue. Alternatively, a company may choose to report
maintenance revenue together with revenue from other services, such as consulting services and
implementation services, as one services figure. IDC attempts to determine in its data collection
process the portion for license and for software maintenance.
Subscription Revenue
An alternative method of licensing software is via a subscription. In this case, the customer agrees to
pay on a month-by-month basis (or some other period plan). Because the cancellation clauses of such
contracts typically have a fairly small advance-notice requirement (usually between 30 days and 90
days), there is no assurance of future revenue; therefore, revenue may be recognized only as it is
billed under the terms of the contract.
There is no attempt to normalize revenue recognition across companies. For example, some
companies may recognize revenue from long-term contracts over the life of the contract, others may
only defer maintenance revenue, or others may apply some other model for revenue recognition. In all
instances, IDC's software research reports revenue as it is recognized by a company, regardless of the
specific method the company uses for revenue recognition.
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Mergers and Acquisitions: "Backstreaming"
To provide a true depiction of market (as opposed to individual vendor) changes over time, we
"backstream" revenue when a company is acquired. That is, historical reports show revenue for the
combined companies for previous years — independent of when the acquisition actually occurred. The
specific rules for backstreaming are as follows:

Revenue is backstreamed only when an entire company is acquired, not just a product line.

Backstreaming occurs in the first full period (annual, semiannual, or quarterly) following the
completion of a merger or acquisition depending on the historical data periods included in
specific IDC products.

Backstreaming is performed for all reported periods of history.
Calendar Versus Fiscal Years
All IDC software vendor revenue data is reported for calendar years regardless of the reporting cycles
or fiscal years of specific vendors.
Treatment of Exchange Rates
IDC's software worldwide market sizing, vendor shares, and forecasts are published in U.S. dollars.
For historical data, worldwide revenue models are based on information from company headquarters:

For those companies that report in U.S. dollars (the majority of those in IDC's Software
Research database), we do not attempt to determine the currency conversion methodologies
utilized internally by the vendor; we just use the reported revenue in U.S. dollars.

For companies that report in other currencies, we use the average exchange rate for the
appropriate period (i.e., annual, semiannual, or quarterly) to calculate revenue in terms of U.S.
dollars.

IDC displays two currency views for all the vendor share information shown in the software
tracker and all software-related reports. The two currency views are named current and
constant. The current currency view takes into account the exchange rate fluctuation that
occurred between the different semiannual periods reported by IDC. The constant currency
view takes away the impact of exchange rate fluctuation and presents values that are more
indicative of real market growth trends seen at the local level. Note, however, that vendor
share ranking and related analysis published by IDC will be discussed relative to the current
currency view, unless otherwise stated. Table 7 provides an illustration of the two different
currency views.
TABLE 7
Difference Between Current and Constant Currency View: Historical
Vendor Revenue
Time Period
1H13
2H13
1H14
2H14
A$1 (USD equivalent)
1.0316
1.0385
1.0135
0.9209
Current currency view
1.0316
1.0385
1.0135
0.9209
Constant currency view
0.9209
0.9209
0.9209
0.9209
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TABLE 7
Difference Between Current and Constant Currency View: Historical
Vendor Revenue
Time Period
1H13
2H13
1H14
2H14
Note: The constant currency view will consistently apply the exchange rate of the latest available semiannual period to all
previous historical periods. The current currency view will use the exchange rate applicable to each available semiannual
period.
Source: IDC, 2016
IDC's software forecast is built from a bottom-up approach where our country analysts submit the
values in local currency. These local currency values are then converted into two currency views:
current and constant. The current currency view takes into consideration the latest quarterly exchange
rate available during our development of the forecast to reflect the impact of the current economic
situation in each country in our forecast values. The constant currency view removes the impact of
exchange rate fluctuation in our forecast values, thus providing a more representative view of real
growth trends expected from the local perspective. Note, however, that forecast trends and analysis
published by IDC will be discussed relative to the current currency view unless otherwise stated. Table
8 provides an illustration of the two different currency views.
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TABLE 8
Difference Between Current and Constant Currency View: Forecast
Market Sizing
Historical Periods
Time Period
Forecast Periods
1H12
2H12
1H13
2H13
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
A$1 (USD equivalent)
1.0316
1.0385
1.0135
0.9209
Current currency view
1.0316
1.0385
1.0135
0.9209
0.9270
0.9270
0.9270
0.9270
0.9270
Constant currency view
0.9209
0.9209
0.9209
0.9209
0.9209
0.9209
0.9209
0.9209
0.9209
Note: The constant currency view will consistently apply the exchange rate of the latest available semiannual period to all time
periods (both historical and forecast). The current currency view will apply the latest quarterly exchange rate available during
the forecast development to all the forecast time periods. In the example shown, 0.9270 is the exchange rate of 4Q13, the
latest available quarterly exchange rate when the Australia forecast was developed.
Source: IDC, 2015
Allocating Revenue to Geographic Regions
IDC attempts to allocate revenue to the region where the software is deployed/used, not, for example,
where a contract is signed. However, we are highly dependent on company headquarters' reported (or
supplied) regional revenue recognition data. IDC regional analyst guidance is factored into revenue
allocation models to provide additional details as available.
Allocating Revenue to Operating Environments
The preferred method is to allocate revenue to operating environments based on where the license
revenue is derived (for platform-specific licenses). An alternative method is to allocate revenue based
on where the product is run (i.e., based on the percentage of executables on various platforms).
Historical Data Reporting

A maximum of three years of historical revenue data is reported (including backstreaming).
Additional historical data may be available on request, but backstreaming of vendor revenue
and taxonomy changes makes time series comparisons difficult and may require custom data
compilation and analysis by IDC.

The "best" data for a given year is found in the study or pivot table with the latest publication
date including the year in question.

Taxonomy changes are backstreamed; historical years in current reports are stated in terms of
the current taxonomy.

From time to time, we revise historical (prior period) revenue numbers for a company. This
may occur because:

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A company restates its revenue or revenue allocation.
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
We obtain better information about a company, often from input from IDC's regional
analysts.
Determination of "Other"
IDC's Software Research database contains revenue data for over 1,000 vendors. Although we
believe we have included nearly all of the largest vendors, there are certainly a significant number of
other software suppliers about which we do not have information. IDC estimates the aggregate
revenue for these "other" vendors for each functional market to provide a complete revenue picture of
the overall commercial software marketplace:

"Other" represents IDC's estimate of the difference between the explicitly identified vendors'
revenue and the total revenue for the market.

"Other" is largely made up of relatively small vendors, but there is no guarantee that IDC has
tracked all companies larger than the smallest shown in a study or a pivot table.

The size of "other" (in terms of percentage of the total market revenue) varies significantly by
market but is generally larger for small, emerging markets than it is for more mature markets.
"When a Product Becomes a Feature"
A common phenomenon in the software industry is for new technologies to first appear on the market
as standalone, unique products. Over time, these products often begin to become functions/features of
more inclusive products or suites of products. If and when the market for the standalone products
disappears — or at least becomes insignificantly small — IDC would no longer track the market
separately. An example would be GUI builders, which are now incorporated into almost all modern
development environments and tools. However, an issue of how to track revenue arises during a
transition phase when a specific function/feature is marketed both as a standalone product by some
vendors and at the same time as an inseparable feature of a larger product or suite by the same or
other vendors. In this case, there is no defined generic IDC policy; market dynamics and customer
interest dictate how IDC models the markets. Therefore, the definitions for, and published studies on,
specific functional and competitive markets denote how the issue of "when a product becomes a
feature" is addressed.
Forecast Methodology

Software market forecasting begins with the formulation of global and regional macroeconomic
assumptions that are then analyzed to determine how they apply to specific market segments.
In addition, assumptions about specific market-level drivers and inhibitors are developed.

All company revenue models and market forecasts are generated and maintained in a central
database. The "forecast base" is the vendor historical revenue models.

Annual growth rates are determined for each market by geographic region (bottom up) by
IDC's regional analysts. Also, regional analysts factor country-level inputs into the regional
forecasts where available.

IDC's worldwide analysts compile the regional data and are responsible for the overall
forecast.

When included, operating environment forecasts are performed on a distribution of revenue
basis (i.e., total market forecasts are not changed by operating environment forecasts).

Annual forecasts are reviewed and updated as required throughout the year. Updated
forecasts for functional markets are published periodically.
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Synopsis
This IDC study provides a detailed description of IDC's software market taxonomy. For 2016, the
taxonomy includes 81 individual functional markets grouped within three primary segments:
applications, application development and deployment, and system infrastructure software.
In addition, IDC defines a wide range of "competitive" markets. Competitive markets are combinations
of the whole or fractions of functional markets that reflect such market dynamics as the problem being
solved or the technology on which the software is based.
"IDC's software taxonomy represents a comprehensive view of the worldwide software marketplace,"
said Henry Morris, senior VP, Worldwide Software and Services Research. "It continues to be the
premier source for defining and categorizing commercial software."
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About IDC
International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory
services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology
markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make factbased decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,100 IDC analysts
provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in
over 110 countries worldwide. For 50 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients
achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology
media, research, and events company.
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