Business intelligence (BI), collaboration, content management, social software and supply chain management will be the top application software growth segments in 2011, according to Gartner, Inc. This year, the analyst firm says that the focus will be on modernising packaged application systems, enabling diverse user access through software as a service (SaaS) and cloud services, and driving revenue and innovation.
Worldwide enterprise software revenue is forecast to surpass $253.7 billion in 2011, a 7.5 per cent increase from 2010 revenue of $235.9 billion.
"For 2011 through 2015, the highest instances of software market growth will align to the business requirements of attracting and retaining customers, enhancing business processes, improving collaboration and social networking, managing content of all types, reporting of performance and results transparency, and workforce effectiveness and flexibility," said Tom Eid, research vice president at Gartner.
The market-disrupting influences of SaaS, cloud-based services, open-source software, consumerisation and Web 2.0 technologies will expand, while developing countries, including Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC), will prove themselves to be pivotal innovation and growth engines.
"Fundamentally, this is a journey with no true end," Mr Eid said. "It is the next wave of software technology — the shift toward service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based composite processes built on existing IT systems and infrastructure, and application software using rich-client and mobile access. Subsequent waves are sure to follow."
The enterprise software marketplace continually undergoes technology and business model transitions that affect how buyers procure software, implement technology and conduct operations. For example, Gartner predicts significant technology and vendor consolidation during the next several years will reshape the current landscape. During this period of market disruption, highly fragmented software markets will become more structured and marked by an extensive reduction of vendors.
How organisations procure and deliver software is also being challenged with cloud-computing, platform as a service (PaaS) and SaaS, coupled with pervasive and mobile access. The demand for cloud-based solutions will continue throughout the next several years, says the analyst.
Organisations are also expecting to provide significant resources in 2011 to upgrade all types of systems and software, ranging from personal productivity tools, to build-run-manage infrastructure software, to user-driven applications. Virtualisation is a key modernisation factor, says Gartner.
The analyst firm also says that the use of social media and networking continues to gain traction. In the trend of socialisation, which includes personalisation, collaboration and content in the context of user-defined activities, Gartner predicts that unified communications and collaboration will see increased adoption in 2012, and context-aware and presence-based computing will gain more traction in 2013.
Finally, Gartner says there will be increased verticalisation. This trend involves a cycle of horizontal software applications becoming more customised and catered toward specific industries. In deploying new software technologies, it is common for vendors to initially provide generalised technology that, over time, can then give rise to more industry-specific and line-of-business features.
