This IDC study looks at the 2011 vendor shares for the worldwide project and portfolio management (PPM) market, which at 12.9% growth to $3.4 billion nearly doubled the 2010 PPM market's growth (of 6.4%). This significant growth in an economy with ongoing volatility exemplifies demand for effective management of constrained resources as companies reinvest, as well as growth for PPM across a variety of areas.

"Whether the driver is to improve the success rate of projects with better insight, business collaboration, and portfolio and risk management capabilities; to adopt a SaaS delivery model for ease of access across complex sourcing in order to operationalize PPM software costs; or to add mobile capabilities, the trends that we saw drive the market in 2011 will continue to do so for the next few years," said Melinda Ballou, program director for IDC's Application Life-Cycle Management and Executive Strategies service.

"We saw growth across use case areas for PPM, from IT PPM to service resource planning, from new product development to construction and engineering; competitive position and innovation demand effective project and program execution; and execution with complex sourcing in an unpredictable, difficult economy can be more effective with automation and strong process and organizational strategies."