This IDC study provides a 2012–2016 forecast and 2011 vendor share analysis for the worldwide IT project and portfolio management (IT PPM) software-as-a-service market, which experienced 36% growth in 2011 to reach a total revenue of $138 million. We expect a significant 2011–2016 CAGR of 39.7% to result in total IT PPM SaaS revenue of $734.3 million by 2016.

Decision making in brittle financial environments demands effective prioritization, and we saw strong revenue growth from all major and key innovative IT PPM SaaS vendors in 2011. The complexity of multimodal deployment environments with mobile, social, cloud, and Big Data analytics is a business necessity. And the complexity sourcing needed for IT projects also demands IT PPM SaaS automation as an adoption enabler increasingly to execute effectively. New SaaS offerings for IT PPM by major providers such as Microsoft and Oracle 2H12 augment existing offerings from CA, HP, Planview, and smaller providers to contribute to market growth in the SaaS sector for IT PPM significantly during the 2012–2016 forecast period. These are not "nice to have" capabilities but are core to business execution. As companies have reinvested in software development projects, programs and portfolios, we see a commensurate IT PPM SaaS investment at a time of economic volatility and fierce, global competitive pressures …

More generally, the increasing role and complexity of IT in the enterprise and the need to better align IT with business needs, corporate governance, and a plethora of regulatory requirements have combined to support ongoing growth for IT PPM as the economy shifts. Agile and service management vendors have been leveraging IT PPM through alliances, integration, and/or acquisitions. This began to have an impact in 2011–2012, with best-of-breed agile providers such as Rally Software offering solutions and PPM vendors coordinating partnerships and building out offerings and will continue to play a role for market growth through 2015.

"SaaS delivery models for IT PPM have become the norm to drive adoption, as larger vendors provide options and as 40–50%+ of new business for vendors that were previously primarily on-premise is occurring for their SaaS offerings," said Melinda Ballou, program director for IDC's Application Life-Cycle Management and Executive Strategies service. "For areas like IT PPM where cultural and political barriers stymie successful adoption, immediate access to core capabilities via SaaS solutions is hugely beneficial. Decapitalization remains an additional IT PPM SaaS advantage for organizations continuing to struggle with a volatile economy and resource constraints."