Integration Spending to Grow

A study released this week by U.K. research firm Datamonitor plc says global investment in enterprise integration software will grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10 percent through 2005. In addition, the study claims that the government and healthcare sectors will be among the highest areas of investment in 2005. As companies take on several disparate systems, including CRM, ERP, and data warehouses, laying them atop legacy systems, the need for integration software becomes clear, says study author and Datamonitor managing analyst Tony Hart. "It all stems from companies trying to better service their customers, which makes perfect sense," Hart says. "But what results is a veritable mess of platforms underneath, and they must be integrated to create a workable customer service solution." According to the report, the public sector is set to be the fastest growing sector, with a CAGR of approximately 21 percent over the forecast period, which amounts to $203 million in revenues in 2005. Hart claims that eGovernment initiatives are driving demand for cross-departmental portal projects, with the aim of transforming the citizen into a consumer of public services. The healthcare sector will also see significant growth of approximately 20 percent in the coming years, growing to a total of $276 million in 2005. The study says that enterprise portals in the healthcare industry can help speed drugs to market and increase sales while cutting research time and costs. Hart says that companies are going in the right direction when it comes to looking at integration and business technology in general as business-process-oriented projects, and not simply isolated technology implementations. "It is becoming imperative for enterprises to actually understand the dynamics of various parts of multiple processes, as enterprises can gain real-time knowledge of how specific elements of business processes are operating, providing the flexibility and dynamism needed to operate effectively in today's market," Hart says.