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Content Application Market Predicted to Skyrocket

Content management vendors play a key role in helping users adopt new technologies, IDC believes vendors that can leverage the latest technologies to bring content applications to the market will experience the greatest growth. IDC research predicts, the content applications markets will continue to be grow through 2010, with double-digit compound annual growth rates for content access tools, including search engines, content management software, and digital asset management software.

"As IDC predicted, the content applications markets have taken off, because customers have realized that they can not conduct business if they can't find or manage their information," said Susan Feldman, Research Vice President for Content Management and Retrieval Solutions Research at IDC. "Drivers for these markets include the need for regulatory compliance and records management, as well as proven ROI for ecommerce and sales support. In the future, IDC believes that these markets will also be fueled by interest in improving the productivity of information workers."

IDC findings include:

The total worldwide market for secure content and application delivery reached USD 235.5 million in 2004 and is expected to increase at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7% through 2009 to reach USD 330 million.
The market is consolidated, with the top three players, Network Appliance, Blue Coat, and Cisco, capturing a combined 87.3% share. Network Appliance remains the market leader with a 32.1% share. Blue Coat grew faster than the overall market, reaching a 30.1% share.

"The content access tools market - search, text mining, and categorization software grew at an astonishing rate of over 32% to over USD 976 million in 2005," said Feldman. "As investments in extended search platforms slows, new growth will be fueled by applications and appliances that address a specific business problem or need, or by embedding these valuable technologies in new hybrid enterprise applications that combine features from a number of technology markets to create compelling solutions."

The study also found that the market for search embedded in other applications will add significant Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) revenue to current search and retrieval vendors, particularly those that can supply pluggable modules for language analysis and translation, basic search, and text analytics.


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