The worldwide systems management and database software markets grew significantly through 2011, despite a weak global economy, according to two Dec. 21 reports from IDC.

IDC's Worldwide Semiannual System Management Software Tracker showed that the global systems management software market is expected to reach $15.4 billion by the close of 2011. That's a 9.2 percent increase from the 2010 level.

IDC's Tracker monitors more than 110 vendors globally in a total of 49 countries, providing biannual market size, vendor share and forecast data for the six functional markets that make up the system management software market in IDC's software taxonomy.

"The system management software market achieved double-digit growth during the first half of 2011," said analyst Wilvin Chee. "The change and configuration management, and workload scheduling and automation markets maintained the best growth among the functional, but the strongest gains were in the event management market, fueled significantly by the U.S., Japan and CEMA Central and Eastern Europe and Middle East and Africa ."

Among the six functional markets, three had revenue of more than $1 billion for the first half of 2011. These were change and configuration management (CCM), workload scheduling and automation (WSA), and performance management. All three markets experienced very strong growth in the United States, while other regions such as Western Europe and CEMA also had good year-over-year growth. Canada and the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan) had somewhat lower growth in the first half of 2011, compared with previous cycles, but maintained double-digit momentum. Japan and Latin America held steady growth in most markets.

"The first half of 2011 results show continued healthy growth in worldwide system management software revenue," said analyst Tim Grieser. "Growth was fueled by increases in IT spending due to the continuing economic recovery and associated hardware refresh and upgrade cycles, and new investments in managing virtualized and cloud infrastructures. Automation to simplify and optimize IT operational costs was a key factor."

IBM, BMC and Hewlett-Packard held the top three spots in terms of revenue share in the first half, though none were able to generate growth exceeding the market average. IBM and BMC had solid growth in the WSA market while HP achieved its best gains in the CCM and problem management markets.

Meanwhile, a number of vendors, including Microsoft, Hitachi, NEC, VMWare, Symantec and Dell, enjoyed above market average growth in the first half of the year. Microsoft, NEC and VMware performed well in all the system management software markets where they compete. IDC also observed that a total of 14 vendors achieved worldwide revenue of more than $100 million in the first six months of 2011.

The systems management market has not been the only bright spot in the enterprise IT arena. IDC is also reporting that the global database and data integration software market is expected to end 2011 with 11.6% growth.

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