In 2013, research firm IDC observed several high-profile management movements among the major middleware vendors as they restructured to be more relevant and aligned themselves closer to the marketplace, putting a dent in customers’ confidence in causality.
Coupled with uncertainties in the macroeconomic landscape and moderate expansion rates in the two large emerging Asian economies — India and China — the business process management (BPM) and middleware market in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) grew by just 2.2 percent to $1.4 billion in 2013.
However, it is expected to bounce back in 2014 and grow at 6.2 percent to reach $1.5 billion. Growth projections for this market remain positive with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.9 percent and are expected to hit the $2-billion mark by 2018.
“2013 was a year of change as the industry transforms and evolves alongside with technology advancements in the 3rd platform ? cloud, mobility, Big Data, and social,? said Chris Zhang, senior market analyst for application deployment software research at IDC Asia-Pacific.
?The middleware layer is ever more so required to be robust, flexible, and scalable to handle disparate workload demands in terms of velocity, volume, and variety. This ensures the future of middleware technologies: a key enabler to cope with today’s rapidly changing business environment.”
Overall, IDC expects BPM to be the best performer in the middleware market as organizations in the region strive to stay competitive in the global landscape.
Investment in process efficiency will continue to drive growth in this market. Business-to-business (B2B) middleware market is also predicted to do well as organizations aim to achieve high visibility and resiliency of their supply chains.
Increased e-commerce activities in the region are also demanding businesses to invest in more effective communication and collaboration systems.
In terms of technology drivers, increased market momentum and opportunities around mobility will continue to drive demand for mobile application development and deployment platforms.
“IDC expects vendors to expand their focus beyond the core development and deployment platform ? and more on mobile device management, mobile content management (think of the DropBox phenomenon), and mobile security (spanning across identity access, policy management, and encryption capabilities),” Zhang added.
The growth of the Platform as a service (PaaS) market will also continue over the forecast period with some degree of cannibalization to the on-premise market. It is critical for vendors to recognize this trend and start to differentiate themselves in the marketplace as PaaS becomes more of a commodity.
