Microsoft leads slowing enterprise software market
Summary: According to IDC data, the enterprise software market's growth is slowing, but analytics and big data are strong. Western Europe stumbles, but other regions grew.
The global software market grew at a 3.6 percent clip in 2012, but that growth rate---spurred by analytics and big data---masks a slowdown relative to 2011 and 2010, according to IDC data.
IDC reported that the total enterprise software market in 2012 was $342 million, less than half the 2010 and 2011 growth rates. In other words, enterprise software is at "the beginning of a more conservative growth period."
Growth markets in enterprise software include data access, analysis and delivery, collaboration, CRM, security and system and network management software. All of those markets grew about 6 percent to 7 percent.
By region, Middle East and Africa had the strongest growth in 2012 followed by Asia-Pacific, North America and Latin America. Western Europe enterprise software fell 2.3 percent in 2012.
Among the key points from IDC's scorecard:
- Applications accounted for 49 percent of total software revenue and grew 3.3 percent in 2012. The enterprise social software market was a standout with 24.8 percent growth in 2012. Microsoft was the applications leader with 13.7 percent market share followed by SAP, Oracle, IBM and Adobe.
- Systems infrastructure software was 27 percent of the market and had 3.3 percent growth in 2012. Storage and system software flat lined in 2012, but virtualization had double-digit growth rates. Microsoft has 28 percent market share followed by IBM, Symantec, EMC and VMware.
- Applications development and deployment was 24 percent of software revenue in 2012. Analytics, big data, business intelligence and relational database management were hot markets. Oracle has 21.6 percent of this category's market share, followed by IBM, Microsoft, SAP and SAS.
And the overall standings in enterprise software:
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Talkback
Open source is free...
Bingo
How many major corporations or businesses use primarily foss?
Re: How many major corporations or businesses use primarily foss?
Free Software != FOSS
These are all software companies...
Open Source makes sense for Google, Facebook, etc, since a large part of their primary business is developing software - they'll be doing most of the development themselves anyhow, so Open Source makes sense as a starting point. Of course, you do realize that the components that really drive these companies is most definitely NOT open source.
Of course, the world is a much bigger place than the internet, and most major corporations are not in the software development business. For these, FOSS may play a role, but it is only going to do so in so far that it offers the tools and support needed for them to continue their operations. Goals such as "cheaper licensing costs" and "source code available" aren't really going to be that important.
I hear what you're saying but.....
Now you're saying that because open source is free it wouldn't show up on the radar but my question is how does red-hat and the like make money? I mean wouldn't open source software show up in the "other" category.
How can you prove that this is "just a small part of big picture" and not the big picture itself. I mean surely you don't expect people to take your word for it when to me you're just another regular computer user (and anti-Microsoft evangelist) with little to no credentials.
Not true actually, but a nice try, none the less.
That support is called "Sales figures", so they definately would be included in the big picture.
Only if IDC questioned Redhat
On top of that, for $5000/year, and 2 on-staff Redhat certified techs, any company can deploy as many Redhat servers as they want, and have all the support they could ever need from Redhat, so that does not add much to the numbers seen above.
In other words, I agree with MacBroderick.
It's great if the enterprise software you need runs on Linux
There aren't a lot of ERP systems that serve the $20M to $500M business market very well that run on anything other than Windows. Either they are too basic or too complex. That "Free" server OS license isn't going to save you much money when you also have to hire software developers to make your Linux-based software fit your business and then maintain said software.
Of course, the business could just move all that stuff into the cloud (provided that cloud software providers can offer enough flexibility for these businesses - in many cases they can't) - but that would make the whole point moot anyway.
They aren't building their own enterprise software
And you can also modify most all the features in the offerings from IBM, MS ect. We do all the time. We create reports, queries, whatever is needed to get us the info we have from the data accumulated.
That's why we have our own support staff, too.
So if you're going with an open source alternative, you're likely starting with someone else code, so you're going to want to pay support costs instead of "going it alone", hoping that the small collection of accountants, programmers, and support staff you have can create what it is you're looking vs. a company that employs a lot more of those same people towards the same end, given that it's their primary business, while in the enterprise it's secondary, (support) given it not the company's core product/
That is why I disagree with MacBroderick - He's viewing enterprise's software design as GM's or Heinz's core product, when it isn't. Open source or not, isn't it better to get from those who specialize in enterprise software? That's why MS, IBM, Oracle are such large sellers of that, otherwise all enterprises would just be building their own.
Doing 90% of what you need it to do...
from scratch if they're using open source alternatives, since there has to be a lot of it out there, why re-invent the wheel If someone has an open source solution that's doing 90% of what you need it to do, and your staff just needs to modify it slightly?"
Well, in the realm I'm talking about, the commercial software (Accpac/MAS, Dynamics GP/AX/SL/NAV, NetSuite) do about 80%-90% of what most businesses require out of the box, and the other 10%-20% is generally handled by customizations, reporting, and process management. So yes, there is still development work required, however it is usually handled by partners specializing in these packages and ongoing support of those customizations is provided. In-house staff generally only develop reports, rarely do they customize the software itself, though it's not completely unheard of to have small software customizations made by in-house developers.
The open source alternatives (Compiere, OpenBravo) provide really only about 60% of the functionality needed by these types of companies. That pretty much means you're getting a very basic foundation and having to build the operations and accounting functionality you really need from scratch anyway, and getting support for that level of customization is challenging at the best of times.
In simplistic terms your right!
Re: Open source is free...
But its costs are massively deflationary. Red Hat estimated that, for every dollar of business it picked up, it took $10 away from proprietary competitors.
Android/iOS
IDC: Stop being so stupid!
Companies aren't hiring, and many are still reducing staff, which means that, they won't be spending on hardware or software or any other company infrastructure items.
When companies are in a bad economic climate, and that climate is threatening to get much worse, like with the looming Obamacare fears, then, it's a no-brainer as to why companies, and even individuals, wont be spending much, if anything at all, in the coming months and years.
IDC and other so-called "research" companies, always fail to do the complete analysis for why things are as they are. It's time to get some real research done, you dummies.