The worldwide market for application server products and services is set to grow quickly from $251m this year to $16.7bn by 2004, according to a report by consultants Ovum.
They predict that the biggest market segment will be for web application development projects and they see this rising from $32m this year to $9.5bn in 2004. The second growth area will be in web-enabling existing applications, which will rise from $215m this year to $790m by 2004.
Ovum believes the remaining sector, integrated hub construction – where the application server becomes the core around which a company’s information systems will revolve – will rise from just $4.2m this year and, with growth only taking off in 2002, will increase to $6.4bn in 2004.
Ovum sees the big attraction of application server technology as enabling vendors to exit the tainted client-server market while enabling IT departments to centrally deploy, manage and control software applications.
