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IT ops software: CA and HP lose ground while VMware gains

With firms finding cheaper alternatives to the big names such as CA and HP, a chasing group of newer entrants in IT operations management is expanding fast.
Written by Toby Wolpe, Contributor

Four of the top five vendors of software for managing IT operations lost ground last year, while a pursuing group of companies expanded significantly faster than the $17bn market.

Instead of buying expensive tools from the big suppliers, many companies are turning to low-cost commoditised alternatives, often available at a tenth of the price, according to Gartner.

The analyst firm says that change is behind a two or three percent decline in most product segments, apart from workload and IT process automation, which are still maintaining strong double-digit growth.

Two of the leading providers in the sector, IBM and BMC, did show modest year-on-year growth in 2012 of 0.8 percent and 0.9 percent respectively, but CA and HP declined 0.6 percent and 4.3 percent, according to Gartner.

A group of the fastest-growing companies, made up of ServiceNow, SolarWinds, Splunk and VMware, can muster growth rates ranging from 84.4 percent for ServiceNow to 45.5 percent for SolarWinds.

Company Share 2011 Share 2012 Growth 2012
ServiceNow 0.6% 1.1% 84.4%
VMware 0.7% 1.1% 79.4%
Splunk 0.5% 0.7% 48.2%
SolarWinds 1.1% 1.5% 45.5%

Fastest-growing IT operations management vendors in 2012 by share worldwide, 2011-12. Source: Gartner

The only company among the five market leaders, which together account for 55 percent or $9.9bn of the market, to show substantial growth is Microsoft, with a figure of 16.1 percent year on year.

Gartner believes that virtualisation and cloud technologies are helping push growth in the sector, particularly in configuration, availability and performance management.

Along with the growth in workload and IT process automation tools, spending is also up on software for automating private cloud services. The other factor contributing to growth in the sector, according to Gartner, is the development IT service desk tools through the addition of features for mobility, reporting, collaboration, analytics and visualisation.

North America, western Europe and the developed Asia-Pacific regions buy most operations tools but the highest growth for the software is found in Latin America and the emerging Asia-Pacific.

Company 2012 revenue 2012 market share 2011 revenue 2011-12 growth
IBM $3,282.9m 18.2% $3,256.4m 0.8%
CA Technologies $2,119.9m 11.7% $2,258.1m -0.6%
BMC Software $1,921.7m 10.6% $1,903.3m 0.9%
Microsoft $1,477.7m 8.2% $1,271.9m 16.1%
HP $1,134.6m 6.3% $1,185.4m -4.3%
Others $8,064.3m 45.0% $7,303.1m 10.4%
Total market $18,001.1 100% $17,178.2m 4.8%

The top five IT operations management vendors worldwide, 2011-12. Source: Gartner

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