IDC associate vice president, Worldwide Software Trackers Wilvin Chee said the system management software market achieved double-digit growth during the first half of 2011. "The Change and Configuration Management (CCM) and Workload Scheduling and Automation (WSA) markets maintained the best growth among the functional, but the strongest gains were in the Event Management market, fueled significantly by the U.S., Japan, and CEMA region," said Chee, following the release of the report of Worldwide Semiannual System Management Software Tracker by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Among the six functional markets, CCM, WSA, and Performance Management had revenues of more than $1bn for the first half of 2011 (1H11). All three markets experienced very strong growth in the US, while other regions such as Western Europe and CEMA also had good year-over-year growth. Canada and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) had experienced lower growth in 1H11 compared to previous cycles, but managed to maintain double-digit momentum. Japan and Latin America showed steady growth in most markets.

IDC program vice president, Enterprise System Management Software Tim Grieser said the first half 2011 results show continued healthy growth in worldwide system management software revenue. "Growth was fueled by increases in IT spending due to the continuing economic recovery and associated hardware refresh and upgrade cycles, and new investments in managing virtualized and cloud infrastructures. Automation to simplify and optimize IT operational costs was a key factor," Grieser added.

As far as sales go, IBM, BMC, and HP held the top 3 spots in terms of revenue share in 1H11, despite none of them being able to achieve growths beyond the market average.

IBM and BMC led in the WSA market while HP achieved its best in CCM and Problem Management markets. Vendors, including Microsoft, Hitachi, NEC, VMWare, Symantec, and Dell, enjoyed above market average growth in 1H11. IDC noted that a total of 14 vendors achieved worldwide revenues of more than $100 million in 1H11.