UK IT market analyst, Ovum Ltd has warned modeling tool vendors that they must move their tools toward component-based development or risk being sidelined or acquired by 3GL vendors which are moving in on the market.
Mike Budd, author of the report Ovum Evaluates: CASE Products, said that mergers and acquistions have meant that users can now meet most of their application development tool needs from one or two suppliers. The race is on to build the integrations required to deliver seamless software development environments. The report forecasts a continuing trend of acquisitions and partnerships, such as the deals between Microsoft and Rational Software Corp and Platinum Technology Inc. Companies like Sterling Software Inc could find themselves threatened as the consolidation continues.
Ovum says that the overall modeling tools market should grow by 15% a year until 2004, but object-oriented (OO) round-trip and real-time tools will grow 20%. By 2004 the whole market should be worth $2.2bn. In 1998, the OO round-trip market experienced the greatest growth at 24%, and this trend will continue, says Ovum, driven by the uptake of UML, the Unified Modeling Language.
According to Ovum, Rational Software Corp has a clear market lead with its Rose product, some 53% of the market, up from 47%. The analyst attributes this to the marketing failure of Rational’s main competitor, Platinum. Platinum has been unable to counteract the view that Rose is a better UML tool [than Platinum’s Paradigm Plus] although in fact it is not, said the report.
Despite the trend toward OO, the most money is to be made in enterprise tools, says Ovum, some $494m. This is an area in which Sterling holds 48% of the revenues with its Cool:Gen, Cool:2E and acquired Obsyidian products.
