Middleware sales reach £7.2bn in 2007

SOA underpins greater demand for software components

IBM leads the application infrastructure and middleware (AIM) market

Global revenues from the application infrastructure and middleware (AIM) software market peaked at $14.1bn (£7.2bn) in 2007, up 12.9 per cent on the previous year.

A report published by research firm Gartner indicates that strong growth originated in demand for enterprise service buses (ESBs) and business process management suites (BPMSs) to support service orientated architecture (SOA) requirements.

IBM dominated market share with 28.9 per cent, leading BEA Systems with 9.3 per cent and Oracle with 8.5 per cent, though BEA has since been acquired by Oracle.

Making up the top five vendors are Software AG and Microsoft, which saw their revenues from the AIM segment grow fastest by 107 per cent and 42 per cent respectively.