This IDC study provides a 2012–2016 forecast and 2011 vendor share analysis for the worldwide software configuration management (SCM) market. Revenue growth from leading vendors resulting from G2000 and SMB reinvestment led to high-single-digit revenue growth in 2011, up from low growth in 2010 and declines in 2009. This resulted from positive growth at the mature, high end of the SCM market. Many innovative small and midrange vendors succeeded well in targeting emerging market areas. IDC is bullish on this market for 2011 moving into 2012.

"Despite some ongoing volatility, the economy emerged in 2011 with investments in IT and increased disruption with complex deployment environments which resulted in strong SCM market growth as companies seek to drive innovation and manage complex IT initiatives," says Melinda Ballou, IDC program director, Application Life-Cycle Management and Executive Strategies. "A number of factors contributed to SCM growth, including the strong emergence of mobile and cloud development, complex sourcing, agile and the need to manage distributed development, open source, increased compliance demands, and the evolution of SaaS deployment models, which enable faster adoption and decapitalized spending models. We also saw high-double-digit revenue growth in 2011 for a number of innovative, smaller vendors in this space targeting these areas. The push toward multimodal multiplatform deployments (including mobile, social media applications, and embedded) will also drive growth in the forecast period."