INDUSTRY

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- Demand for application development and deployment (AD&D) software in North America is dominated by the services industries. According to a new report from IDC, more than 43% of the revenue for AD&D applications in 2002 came from companies within the services sector of the economy, led by business services, banking and insurance, and engineering/management services. Within the manufacturing sector, the only robust market for AD&D software was with discrete manufacturing companies. "To compete more effectively in the services industries, companies will need to achieve higher levels of automation and scalability in their IT systems, greater reliability, timeliness and integration of information flows, and optimal utilization of their digital assets," said Anna Toncheva, program manager in IDC's Software and Systems Vertical Views program. "These objectives will be met by continued investments in new applications, thereby creating significant opportunities for AD&D providers who can align their efforts to meet the specific needs of service providers in different vertical industries." Led by vertical markets that are dependent on business spending, IDC expects the AD&D market will grow to more than $27 billion by 2007, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.3%. The business and financial services sectors, as well as discrete manufacturing sectors of the North American economy will be the largest vertical markets in 2007, while broadcast communications, mining, discrete manufacturing and telecom offer the greatest growth opportunities over the forecast period. Successful AD&D providers will enlist the right partners to align niche technologies with platforms and to guide customers in connecting line of business (LOB) and IT imperatives, reengineering business processes, solving development, deployment, integration, and maintenance challenges, reducing product cycles, and increasing developer productivity. The IDC study, North America Application Development and Deployment Tools Forecast, 2002-2007: Vertical Industry and Company Size Perspective for Software Vendors (IDC #30032), addresses application development and deployment software adoption trends and investment developments anticipated to define the vertical profile of the revenue streams for 2003-2007. Derived from both demand-side and supply-side information, the analysis compares vertical markets across five secondary software markets - information access and delivery software, information and data management software, application development and construction tools, application life-cycle management software, and application deployment platforms. Each of the software markets is further segmented into 20 vertical industry markets, with three company revenue bands. Other related report findings can be found in the following IDC studies: * North America Applications Software Forecast, 2002-2007: Vertical Industry and Company Size Perspective for Software Vendors (IDC #30027) * North America System Infrastructure Software Forecast, 2002-2007: Vertical Industry and Company Size Perspective for Software Vendors (IDC #30044) To purchase this document, call IDC's sales hotline at 508-988-7988 or email sales@idc.com.