This IDC study provides a 2013–2016 forecast and 2011 vendor share analysis for the worldwide IT project and portfolio management (IT PPM) market, which experienced 11.3% growth in 2011 to $896.6 million up from 8.7% growth (and $805.7 million in 2010 revenue).

Decision making in brittle financial environments demands effective prioritization, and we saw strong revenue growth from all major and key innovative smaller vendors in 2011 with few exceptions. More generally, the increasing role and complexity of IT in the enterprise with mobile and social platforms driving growth and the need to better align IT with business needs, corporate governance, and a plethora of regulatory requirements have combined to retain strong ongoing growth for IT PPM as the economy shifts. IDC has also seen increased alignment of IT PPM with mobile; evolving SaaS and cloud strategies from major providers, with rapid uptake of SaaS IT PPM; governance, risk, and compliance (GRC); and application life-cycle management (ALM) and agile. This had impact in 2011 and will continue to play a role for market growth through 2016. IDC's forecasts show higher and continuing growth in the IT PPM segment during our five-year forecast period, reaching revenue of around $1.7 billion in 2016.

"Global 2000 organizations struggle with the ever greater complexity of IT delivery while seeking to address economic and political volatility as technology and business needs change and swirl dynamically around them. Management of human, financial, and other resources is key. In response, as businesses and vendors consolidate offerings and focus their strategy in the wake of acquisitions and as niche players target emerging areas, demand will remain ongoing for IT PPM tools throughout our forecast period as larger vendors acquire core technologies to deliver more complete ITLM solutions," says Melinda Ballou, program director for Application Life-Cycle Management and Executive Strategies at IDC. "Smaller vendors will continue to play a key role in product and market innovation, and differentiated IT PPM solutions will come into play in that context as further consolidation occurs with additional acquisitions during the 2012–2016 time frame."

Revenue growth from leading vendors resulting from G2000 and SMB reinvestment led to low-single-digit revenue growth up from low 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 was bullish on this market for 2011 moving into 2012.

"Despite some ongoing volatility, the economy emerged in 2010 with investments in IT and increased disruption with complex deployment environments, which resulted in a return to SCM market growth as companies seek to drive innovation and manage complex IT initiatives," says Ballou. "A number of factors contributed to SCM growth, including 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 2010 for a number of innovative, smaller vendors in this space targeting these areas. The push toward multiplatform deployments (including mobile and embedded) will also drive growth in the forecast period."