The BPM Market is Expected to Grow 15 Percent

As organizations attempt to cut costs and streamline business processes, a recently released study from Dataquest shows increasing momentum in the business process management (BPM) software space, and expects that growth to continue its double-digit pace through 2004. In 2002 the worldwide BPM market saw license revenues of $452.5 million. That space grew in 2003 between 15 percent and 20 percent, to $520 to $543 million. Dataquest estimates that combined license, maintenance, services, and training revenue exceeded $1.2 billion in 2003. The Gartner research shows that over the next four years a variety of factors, including technology advancements coupled with stepped-up business requirements for integration, will drive BPM growth. Gartner predicts that the BPM market will see moderate double-digit growth, to $598 million through 2007. All these forecasts are based on an assumption that the economy will rebound by mid-2004, to show a 9.8 percent compound annual growth rate. The real revenue and market potential for BPM is at the business level, enabling new business strategies, reducing operating costs, and improving process performance and other tangible areas of management attention. According to Nicole Latimer, an industry analyst at Gartner, there are a variety of factors driving the increasing need for BPM, among them the growing pace of business, increased demands for better customer service, the need for more business efficiency, and the demand for a higher ROI.