Over the last few years, the global enterprise software market has experienced significant uncertainty, much of which has resulted from the ongoing turmoil in the Eurozone. However, it seems that there may now be some light on the horizon. According to a recent report by industry analyst IDC, there was an encouraging uptick in enterprise software sales globally in the first half of 2013 – with the analyst firm calling out a fledgling recovery in the Eurozone as a major contributing factor to the rise.
IDC’s analysis reveals that the global enterprise software market grew at 5.5% year over year, with worldwide annual sales reaching their highest levels ever at $179 billion. That growth rate is up from 5.1% in the same period last year, and is broadly in line with IDC’s previous forecasts for the sector. IDC also projects that the enterprise software market will continue to see moderately positive growth for a number of years to come.
In terms of areas experiencing significant growth, two of the big winners seem to be data analytics and content. According to Henry Morris from IDC, “Enterprises are seeing new opportunities to drive new and improved products and services by leveraging information. Therefore, it stands to reason that software to manage, access, and share information (structured and unstructured) continues to be a priority for competing in today’s economy and a driver of software market growth.”
Another key takeaway from the report was that process automation, system integration middleware and structured data management are areas with high potential. In fact, overall growth in these combined sectors was above 6%, with business process management software and relational databases for content storage leading the way. There also seems to be an increasing link between process automation and collaboration, with a growing trend to integrate business process support into collaborative applications.
This overall market landscape bodes well for vendors who can combine content management, process automation and analytics. One obvious industry player that falls into this category is www.idatix.com – the company’s software combines workflow management, document management and analytics into an integrated platform. The firm, which was founded in 2000, has built a stable of successful implementations, and also offers a wide range of industry specific solutions – covering areas such as energy, manufacturing, healthcare, distribution and banking.
From a regional perspective, it appears that the Western Hemisphere is by far the most promising market for enterprise software. Growth in Latin America came in at an impressive 8.6%, with the United States just slightly behind at 7.9%. In fact, IDC made the point that the Americas now account for no less than 52.6% of the global market for enterprise software, with that share growing in the last 12 months.