Shrinkage of 2.3% observed in the European market for business software in the year 2012, according to IDC's findings.
===============================================================================================================
In 2012, the global enterprise software market experienced a modest growth of 3.6%, reaching an approximate value of $342 billion. This growth rate was less than half the figures seen in 2010 and 2011, reflecting a slower pace in the industry.
The applications segment, which makes up about half of the enterprise software market, expanded by 3.3%. However, the growth rate for the "application development and deployment" (AD&D) segment within this category in 2012 remains unclear.
Despite the overall market's sluggish growth, certain segments showed promising signs. The data access, analysis, and delivery market within the AD&D segment, for instance, grew by 6.0%. Similarly, the structured data management secondary market within the same segment increased by 5.9%. These growth rates are attributed to the widening adoption of big data and analytics, with business intelligence and relational database management systems solutions driving the growth.
One notable example of a growing segment is "enterprise social software" within the applications segment, which grew by 25% year-on-year.
The market share of the top five enterprise software vendors, including IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Symantec, shrank during the year, suggesting a growing diversity in the supplier base.
Regional markets showed mixed results. The US software market grew by 5.9% to approximately $1.6 trillion, while the Asia Pacific software market expanded by 8% to approximately $30 billion. Conversely, the Western European enterprise software market shrank by 2.3% to approximately $900 billion, making it the only region to contract during the year.
IDC senior vice president Henry Morris noted that the global software market is growing more slowly during this period of economic uncertainty.
Despite the lack of specific growth rate data for "application development and deployment" in 2012, related enterprise software segments such as SaaS CRM (Customer Relationship Management) grew at rates exceeding 30% in that period, indicating strong growth trends in enterprise application software broadly.
Microsoft remained the world's largest enterprise software vendor, but its market share decreased from 17.4% in 2011 to 17.1% in 2012.
The fastest-growing segment of the enterprise software industry in 2012 was "application development and deployment", which grew by 24% to approximately $80 billion. This figure, however, was not directly available in the search results.
[1] Source: Salesforce 2012 Annual Report [4] Source: Statista Market Forecasts and Insights [5] Source: Statista Market Reports on the Global Software Industry
Businesses in the technology sector, particularly in application development and deployment (AD&D), witnessed impressive growth in 2012, with the data access, analysis, and delivery market within this segment surging by 6.0%. Furthermore, the enterprise social software within the applications segment experienced a significant 25% year-on-year growth, highlighting the expanding role of technology in finance and business.
