HP announced that it has achieved a first place ranking in worldwide software license revenue in the overall distributed performance and availability management software market for 2003, according to data released by IDC. The analyst firm reported that HP OpenView management software realized 23.5 percent market share in the category, which represents 26.6 percent growth over 2002 and is almost double that of each of the next two closest competitors. HP also leads in the two constituent submarkets: distributed performance management software with 18.7 percent market share, up 28 percent from 2002; and for the third consecutive year in the worldwide distributed event automation software market, with 37.3 percent market share. This compares to a 9.1 percent year-over-year increase the total worldwide market achieved in 2003, when total revenue was $2.05 billion. The HP OpenView management software portfolio includes some of the most comprehensive infrastructure management offerings available on the market today, providing solutions that not only measure IT performance, but also provide active knowledge and control needed to manage business services in real time. By providing a dynamic link between business and information technology (IT), HP OpenView solutions help chief information officers and business service managers better understand and respond to IT events that influence customer service and business delivery. "HP's software leadership in the critical IT performance and availability market demonstrates that we're delivering solutions which directly control and impact the overall quality of IT management experience," said Todd DeLaughter, vice president and general manager, Management Software Organization, HP. "While our competitors have continued to focus on the declining mainframe management market, HP has committed its expertise to new innovation in distributed performance management. Today, this focus is enabling customers with the links they need to connect business process with IT and automate these links to further bolster the value of their IT systems." The distributed performance and availability management software market includes software tools used in IT operations or by end users to manage the performance of distributed systems and their responses to nonscheduled system and application events. HP OpenView products and solutions included in IDC's research include HP OpenView Operations for Windows, Operations for Linux and Operations for UNIX, OpenView Performance Manager and OpenView Performance Insight. According to the IDC study, the distributed performance and availability management software market is forecast to grow from $2.05 billion in 2003 to $3.46 billion in 2008 at a compound annual growth rate of 11.1 percent for the five-year period.