In the two years since we last updated the application lifecycle market analysis much of what we predicted has come to pass.
There has been a steady market consolidation within the vendor community, especially within the management space, driven by the need to provide greater control and insight into the delivery process.
The desire for the concept of services and service orientation as a means of delivering a loosely connected flexible architecture has been made more attainable, allowing different technologies to integrate and work more easily together, catering for change, and agility and promoting a more functional-based interaction.
It has done so through the advent of web services standards, the simplicity of the core technology and the cross community and industry support the technology and the standards have received.
As a result, there has been a rise in purveyors of ‘service-oriented’ applications, approaches, management and infrastructure, which have been aligned with the application lifecycle framework, driving further consolidation in the market.
Predictability, quality, risk assessment and management and cost efficiencies are still big drivers for many organisations.
However, there is also renewed focus on, and a greater urgency for, business-aligned IT management, process control and innovation, both within the end user community and providers of application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions.