According to IT research firm Gartner global application infrastructure and middleware (AIM) software revenue market reached $19.3bn in 2011, up 9.9% when compared to $17.6bn in 2010.
Gartner research director Fabrizio Biscotti said AIM projects increasingly span on-premises, cloud and external business partners.
"The impacts of using multiple delivery models, increased reliance on governance technologies, and convergence of application and data integration requirements are driving organizations to sustain significant investment in AIM technologies and skills," Biscotti added.
"Middleware vendors should leverage their expertise to offer competitive cloud services in addition to on-premises software products. Although the transition from on-premises to cloud computing will take an extended period of time, the demand for hybrid use of platform technologies is present now, and is projected to grow rapidly during the next two to four years."
Top five vendors in this market showed solid growth despite difficult market conditions, with IBM retaining its leadership position as it increased its market share to 32.1%.
Application servers have showed double digit growth, while service oriented architecture (SOA) governance technologies, portal products and user interaction tools performed well.
"Business process management (BPM) suites continued to grow at a sustained pace as some providers are evolving their offerings into next-generation application infrastructure platforms that Gartner defines as iBPMSs. These platforms address the growing need to account for social interactions, mobility and decision management in the process management context," Biscotti said.
Gartner principal research analyst Asheesh Raina said, "North America and Western Europe are the largest regional markets, followed by mature Asia/Pacific countries. Emerging regions have grown fastest due to solid performance in Latin America and Asia/Pacific."
The primary drivers for AIM growth in Asia/Pacific have been domestic demand, growing maturity of users and incremental enhancements in AIM technology.
