News

Worldwide Serverware Market to Hit $6.4B by 2004

• By Scott Bekker
• 08/07/2000

"Organizations are increasingly building complex computing solutions from interconnected and distributed low-end or midrange systems. However, the networking and distributed system technology used in these solutions is quite complex, and these organizations want their solutions to be easy to use, robust, reliable, scalable, and easy to manage," said Dan Kusnetzky, vice president of System Software at IDC (www.idc.com). "In other words, they want the multiple-system solution to look as much as possible like software running on a single system, and because serverware is coming increasingly close to accomplishing this, there is a huge demand for it."

IDC splits the serverware market into several segments: file movement software, file system/volume replication software, clustering software, load balancing software, distributed file systems, Web server software, distributed naming or directory services, and virtual user interface software.

The distributed file system segment is leading the market's growth. The revenues in that segment increased 309 percent in 1999. However, even with the exponential growth, revenues in the segment amounted to $35.6 million, or only 1.3 percent of the total market, the smallest share of any segment. File movement accounts for the largest share of revenues - $549 million in 1999, 20.5 percent of the market.

North America and Western Europe represent the largest opportunity for serverware vendors. Together, they accounted for almost 90 percent of sales in 1999, and they are expected to hold that share through at least 2004.

IDC's report, Serverware Market Forecast and Analysis, 2000-2004, analyzes the entire serverware market and examines the growth of its various segments. - Isaac Slepner