IBM Keeps Position At The Top Of Middleware Market -Study
By CHRIS REITER
July 21, 2005 5:31 p.m.
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK -- International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) kept its leading position in the $7 billion middleware market last year, according to a study by industry research firm IDC.
IDC analyst Dennis Byron said that IBM, which dominates the Windows and mainframe markets, increased its market share to 37% from 36%.
The Armonk, N.Y. company came out clearly ahead of its nearest rival, BEA Systems Inc. (BEAS), whose market share was flat at 12%.
IBM's next closest rival was database giant Oracle Corp. (ORCL), whose market share was likewise flat at 7%. Still, Oracle is gaining transaction in the market, growing twice as fast as the market average, Byron said.
IDC predicts the middleware market will grow at an annual rate of 4.7% through 2009. That's a slowdown from the 6.4% growth in 2004, the industry researcher said.
IDC refers to the market as application deployment software, which encompasses application, Web, and integration servers, transaction server middleware and related software. The products generally help software systems communicate with one another |
