This IDC study examines the Canadian enterprise application software market and provides a forecast for the period from 2012 to 2016. The market for enterprise applications totaled $4 billion in 2011, 5.5% higher than the previous year's spending total. Over the 2011–2016 time frame, spending is estimated to increase an average of 6.2% per year, which produces a market size of approximately $5.5 billion in 2016.

"IDC Canada believes that the traditional enterprise applications market will continue to grow for the foreseeable future, but it has now been joined by new and emerging application architecture, delivery, and deployment strategies, which will offer buyers substitution alternatives that could better reflect buyer usage and needs over the long term. These changes, led by cloud, SaaS, and social platforms, will alter the enterprise applications landscape over the forecast period and present new challenges and opportunities for buyers and suppliers," says Nigel Wallis, director, Enterprise Application Research.