Application development (AD) software revenue in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) is forecast to reach $144.5m, an increase of 6.7% from 2009 revenue of $135.4m, according to a report by information technology research and advisory firm Gartner.
IBM held the largest market share of 26.3% of ANZ AD market in 2009, growing by 6.4% YoY. HP accounted for 15.3% of the market share with a marginal growth of 2.3% over the previous year, while Microsoft’s market share (13.4%) grew by 8.5% over the year 2008 given its preannouncement of Visual Studio 2010.
CA experienced a slight growth of 2.8% accounting for 9.7% of the ANZ AD market share, while Micro Focus declined by 6.1% over the previous year contributing 5.9% to the market share. Compuware is the only vendor among the top five to reach double digit growth figure(10.3%), grabbing 8.4% of the market share.
Gartner said that the ongoing need to invest in security testing is one of the top drivers of the application development market. This segment grew fastest in 2009 as security breaches continued to highlight the need for good testing.
According to the report, open source offerings in the AD market remain attractive, and Java platform and dynamic web application tools will continue to see the biggest impact from open source alternatives. Consolidation of this market will continue with larger vendors acquiring pure play and point products to round out their suits and portfolio offerings.
Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst at Gartner, said: "There is pent up demand for AD products and 2010 should see the return of higher growth for Australia and New Zealand. One of the main reasons for solid growth is the relative insulation from the worldwide economic downturn, as well as sustained domestic consumption. Many markets across the globe continue to be in decline."
