The applications server software platform (ASSP) market continued to grow strongly last year, despite the expectations of many that growth would begin to moderate, according to research from IDC. In 1999, worldwide revenues grew by 110% to $957 million. In 2000, revenues grew another 128% and reached almost $2.2 billion. Strong growth is expected to continue through 2005, says the survey.
ASSP products allow businesses to set up specific applications to develop their ebusiness activities. In one sense, the strength of the ASSP market reflects the growing concern with ebusiness and ecommerce generally.
“It’s difficult to overstate the significance of this growth rate. When a market reaches the level of maturity that the ASSP market reached in 1999, annual growth usually slows, not accelerates,” said Steve Garone, IDC’s vice president of Application Development and Deployment research.
Survival in the ASSP market requires more than just ASSP products. Vendors need to provide an ebusiness platform that includes all the functions necessary to build and deploy ebusiness applications, leveraging the ASSP as the foundation layer,” says Garone.
