Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure, 2Q07

One of the biggest changes historically in software markets was the emergence of a market for middleware products, which sat between the operating system (OS) and the application software. Until recently, middleware products were specialized and performed distinct roles. During the past five years, a combination of the increasing reach of new business applications, with product development by middleware suppliers, and acquisitions has resulted in those distinct products evolving into suites (see "Software Suite Offerings Proliferate, and Complexity Engulfs All"). During the past two years, this convergence has accelerated, fueled by acquisitions across the sector.

The combination of product evolution and convergence has resulted in overlapping capabilities in what were considered separate product categories. The separation of development tools and runtime middleware has also blurred. It is, therefore, appropriate to recognize the emergence of a new category of software, which we call "application infrastructure."

Application infrastructure includes the majority of runtime middleware, as well as AD and management tools that support the new generation of application styles based on service-oriented architecture (SOA), event-driven architecture and business process management (BPM) technology.

Enterprises may acquire application infrastructure as a best-of-breed assembly of multiple products; an integrated one-vendor, end-to-end suite of technologies; or a specialized collection of technologies serving a well-defined purpose. Application infrastructure should not be considered as a single purchase at a single point in time, but as a foundation for one or many software projects within an IT department. These products and technologies are also used by companies developing packaged business applications. Thus, OEM arrangements are often important; however; this analysis focuses on the market from the perspective of enterprise buyers.

Gartner defines application infrastructure as platforms for delivering business applications, including development and runtime enablers. We expect products to feature excellence in all relevant functional areas and technical capabilities, with added excellence in internal integration of the many technical building blocks that users will require. Applications intended to support specific business functions may be included with a platform, but this capability is not included in our market assessment for the Magic Quadrant, which addresses requirements that are independent of specific business functions. Experience creating packaged applications is relevant regarding its contribution to the depth of functional understanding, but it can also prove a challenge in maintaining focus on internal and external customers, and development of a diverse partner ecosystem.

We should also note that while Gartner was working on this Magic Quadrant, Software AG acquired webMethods. The timing of the acquisition did not allow Gartner to analyze the resultant entity for this research. Therefore, the two vendors are rated separately, although the announced acquisition influenced the rating of both vendors. Software AG has the potential of becoming a vendor with one of the richest and more technically advanced offerings for application infrastructure. However, the success of the acquisition is not a given, because the company will face significant cultural, business, organizational and product line rationalization challenges (see "Software AG's Proposed Acquisition of webMethods Marks Strategic Shift Toward SOA").

To succeed in the modern business computing environment, organizations must have the flexibility to experiment and innovate while preserving the overall integrity and quality of service for their core systems. To achieve this, most enterprises are engaged in projects of two categories:

Systematic ones � designed to advance the core enterprise computing capability
Opportunistic ones � designed to experiment with new opportunities (see "Systematic vs. Opportunistic: Useful Heterogeneity")

The product and vendor selection decisions considered in this research target primarily the systematic projects and their holistic view on an enterprise's application infrastructure.

Inclusion in this Magic Quadrant is based on an assessment of the functional capabilities of products that are generally available in the market at of the end of 2Q07. These capabilities are defined in "'Application Infrastructure' Reflects New Dynamics in the Software Market." We assessed their relevance to a range of usage patterns related to many common project types and with respect to situations where buyers were considering a supplier that could deliver capabilities suitable for multiple project types. This Magic Quadrant is based on suppliers that ranked highest with respect to the weighted set of capabilities across multiple project types.

The weighted composite score was used to determine which suppliers to include in this Magic Quadrant and as the score for the Product/Service criterion in the Magic Quadrant. The number of suppliers included is based on our assessment of those that have sufficient breadth of capability to be relevant in the broadest use scenarios and project types for enterprise buyers.

This Magic Quadrant represents the market addressed by suppliers with a broad range of capabilities. Often, more-specialized suppliers may offer products with greater capabilities in specific areas. Therefore, this Magic Quadrant should be used in combination with Magic Quadrants that represent more-specific market views.

Given the scope of requirements of buyers seeking application infrastructure to support a wide range of project types, the capabilities of each supplier's products and the long-term viability of the supplier are the most important criteria for the ability to execute in this market. Companies with more-specialized products or unproven viability (for example, recent market entrants) will not be rated so strongly in this market. They may, however, offer products that could form an important part of the solution set for a user organization. See the Recommended Reading section for project-specific Magic Quadrants within this overall market.

Completeness of vision in this market is demonstrated by a combination of:

Market understanding (how the needs of customers across the domain of application infrastructure will evolve)
Product strategy (how well the product maps to that evolution and how well the supplier's strategy demonstrates consistent delivery in line with market demands)
Degree of innovation delivered to the market (in terms of product capabilities, delivery mechanisms and support)

No significant geographic differentiation in requirements exists regarding application infrastructure products, so geographic strategy is not considered a relevant factor in completeness of vision (breadth of geographic presence and distribution channel is, however, relevant to the ability to execute).

The leaders in this Magic Quadrant have a full range of capabilities to support all project types in any geographic location and have demonstrated consistent product delivery over a considerable period to meet customer needs. For most enterprises, it is infeasible and undesirable to select a single supplier to satisfy all needs. Conversely, almost any enterprise will likely have a significant investment in products from one or more of these suppliers and little likelihood of removing their dependence on their incumbent suppliers of application infrastructure.

This market does not tend to create suppliers with the characteristics of challengers. Companies will either specialize (in product or geography) and adopt a niche role within this overall market (which may often be an effective and successful strategy) or move into a leadership position via innovation and market focus that starts narrow and increases in scope. It is unlikely that a company will seek leadership via scope and scale of execution as a primary point of attack. The lack of many challengers to date reflects this dynamic.

The visionaries in this market have not exhibited the scope of delivery of the leaders, but have exhibited vision across a range of application infrastructure capabilities � not necessarily with respect to all capabilities, but many of them.

Niche players focus on more-limited capabilities than leaders, although these capabilities may be extensive given the breadth of functionality called for in application infrastructure. The niche strategy may be a long-term choice for some suppliers (as is true in many markets), while some suppliers may aspire to increased market presence but have yet to achieve it. Solutions from niche and visionary suppliers in this market may often form a complementary part of the complete portfolio of application infrastructure products deployed in an enterprise.

A broad, comprehensive set of advanced multiplatform technologies; leading positions in application servers, portals, integration and BPM.
Leading presence and reputation in high-end enterprise computing.
Successful acquisitions of leading visionary vendors in portal (Plumtree Software), BPM technology (Fuego) and metadata management (Flashline).
Vertical industries (including telecommunications, financial services and government) and international (including notably middleware leadership in China) strength and name recognition.

Minimal presence or record in mass-market and low-end small and midsize business (SMB) markets.
High prices lead customers to consider alternatives.
Absent in some key growing areas of modern enterprise technology, including dynamic grid, distributed memory spaces and software as a service (SaaS).
Modest dedicated support for composite applications engineering; no pre-built packaged composite application or composition productivity aids.

Rich application infrastructure offering providing a wealth of AD tools and the integrated Uniface suite, including portal, BPM technology, development tools, runtime container and basic application integration capabilities.
Large and loyal installed base of Uniface application platform suite.
Proven Uniface technology, including for large business-critical deployments.
Strong global presence.

Low recognition of Compuware as an end-to-end application infrastructure provider from non-Uniface users.
Limited investment in new customer acquisition and slow product evolution, in part due to installed base inertia.
Limited new independent software vendor (ISV) and systems integrator investments.
Little functionality related to advanced back-end application integration (advanced transformation and content-based routing).

Well-integrated product that is strong in high-productivity design tools and high-performance deployment infrastructure, with advanced event-driven internal architecture.
Dedicated focus on composite applications and BPM application models.
Strong private financial resources, strategic relationship with WebEx, including WebEx's SaaS initiative.
Well-functioning advanced engineering team that has been together for many years and an outstanding engineering vision for middleware.

Small installed base with little global coverage.
Uncertain and frequently changing product positioning.
Nonstandard programming model creates skills deficit and reduces attraction for new software development.
Increasing dependence on venture capital dilutes the leadership of the company.

Leadership position in large Japanese markets and strong presence in other East Asian markets.
Fujitsu hardware brand recognition and global reach that are leveraged for Interstage sales.
Strong presence in the BPM area and a comprehensive product line in SOA and BPM.
Strong commitment by its CEO to business expansion outside Japan.
Expansion of partnerships with ISVs to complement its products on Interstage and complete its ecosystem (for example, SoftwareAG and IDS Scheer).

Market presence outside of East Asia is not as large as leading competitors and is a niche for a company of Fujitsu's size. Companies will find substantial barriers in North American and European markets because of a low installed base and lack of name recognition in infrastructure area as it tries to expand.
Systems integration resources are insufficient to drive Interstage brand and sales.
Complex operations and a noncohesive product portfolio mitigate against the emergence of a common Fujitsu ecosystem.

Strong presence in Asian markets for traditional system development.
Strong business commitment to expand into other markets.
Track record in mission-critical systems.

Slow to offer new capabilities, particularly regarding application composition and business process support.
Support and systems integrator resources are limited outside Japan.

Breadth of product range (including credible attempts to scale products for smaller users outside the traditional IBM market).
Long history of providing support for complex and high-performance systems and large installed base in critical application infrastructure segments (including portal, application server, application integration, data integration, transaction processing and development tools).
Powerful combination of product and services capabilities for those that want a single source.
Leadership in many standard activities and in promoting new SOA-oriented concepts.

The complexity of IBM's product range can be daunting for less-sophisticated users.
IBM is still completing the rationalization and integration of its WebSphere product line (and continuing to make acquisitions, which extends this process).
Newer and critical SOA-enabling products have small production installed bases.
Issues with support consistency exist across geographies, especially for most-recently released products.

Leading position in the healthcare industry as the key independent application infrastructure vendor.
Innovative high-productivity and high-performance products for applications, composite applications, integration and BPM, including the long-standing DBMS/4GL Cache and the more recent composite application platform Ensemble.
Large ecosystem of ISV partners.
Well-executing, profitable and growing privately owned business.

Limited presence outside healthcare.
Nonstandard programming environment does not address typical requirements for new AD.
No provisions for extreme transaction processing (XTP) fundamentals: tera-grid, distributed shared memory and event-driven middleware.
Minimal industry influence via standards or open-source initiatives.

Strong position as an ERP supplier in the Chinese market.
Development of middleware platform to support application extension and creation.

No significant presence outside China.
Middleware sales largely linked to enterprise application sales.

Rich iBolt integration platform based on a proven, metadata-driven AD and runtime container (eDeveloper) and providing transformation, routing, human workflow, modeling, composition, portal and business activity monitoring (BAM).
Easy-to-use, flexible and productive product set designed to support composite AD and deployment.
Global network of partners (ISVs, value-added resellers and systems integrators).
Singular focus on SMBs and SAP, Oracle's JD Edwards World and IBM's System i ecosystems via indirect channels.

Management changes, reorganization, divestiture of peripheral businesses and strategy redefinition following acquisition by a larger concern (Emblaze).
Business has not demonstrated growth and only recently regained profitability.
Limited brand recognition.
Convergence of eDeveloper and iBolt into one integrated platform is still in the making.

Credible application infrastructure stack and surrounding technology (for example, OS and database) with huge installed base.
Diverse ecosystem of partners complementing Microsoft's own products for additional products and skills.
Some important features (for example, Windows Communication Framework and Windows Workflow Foundation) are free components of .NET Framework 3.0. Products have attractive pricing for projects and companies of all sizes.
Deep integration with Windows OS on server, desktop and other hardware platforms.

Has lagged in creating and bringing to market a comprehensive framework for SOA. Participation in important standards, such as service component architecture (SCA), is lacking. Support for SOA is focused exclusively on Web services.
Weak in supporting coexistence in a heterogeneous system environment.
Tends to think in terms of opportunistic development, thereby providing few support projects using systematic development.
Microsoft's application infrastructure is limited to the Windows environments, so its successes are limited to that environment. Within that environment, its application infrastructure has only a modest record in high-end enterprise projects.

Long track record in offering a mission-critical capability in back-end systems.
Aggressive investment in R&D, especially in implementing standards much faster than others � for example, NEC was the first vendor that implemented Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) 2.0, Java Business Integration (JBI) and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) 3.0 globally � with robust quality of services.
Strong capability and commitment in the telecommunications industry.
Strong commitment by the CEO to shift business values.

Systems integration and support resources for NEC Active Globe outside Japan are limited.
Weak presence of Active Globe in the integration area.
Incoherent architecture in the product portfolio.
Weak articulation of innovative business values.

Oracle's brand, global reach, "mind share" and huge installed base of products (database and packaged applications), which are leveraged for Oracle Fusion Middleware sales.
Comprehensive Oracle Fusion Middleware product suite, including portal, enterprise application server, composition and orchestration, enterprise service bus (ESB), development tools, metadata management, registry, security and management.
Fast-growing Oracle Fusion Middleware business and brand recognition.
Advanced and innovative vision in emerging application infrastructure technologies, such as complex event processing and extreme transaction processing.

Oracle doesn't have the same track record as some of its major competitors in delivering and supporting application infrastructure.
Newer products lack many proven references.
The extensive and rapidly evolving product portfolio, together with the need to support external customers and internal application product development, creates a challenge in prioritizing and maintaining architectural coherence.
Oracle Fusion Middleware market awareness, although growing, is not as wide as that of leading competitors.

Leading player in Open Source OS (Linux) and dominating player in open-source application infrastructure (JBoss/JEMS) with strong developer commitment.
Continuing momentum of open-source products with mainstream enterprises.
Outstanding core engineering team for platform technologies.
Consolidated business model of Red Hat and JBoss product lines builds on proven experience, but preserves mutual independence.

Success of the acquisition of JBoss is still unproven, leaving open a possibility of slowing adoption of JBoss platform technologies.
Relatively small installed base for most platform technologies beyond JBoss application server.
Need to rehire and retrain the sales force to carry the application infrastructure products in addition to the familiar Linux base.
Supported development tools for mainstream enterprise developers lack the productivity enrichment of most competitors.

Large and loyal application installed base creates huge up-sell opportunity for application infrastructure.
Strategic codevelopment of SAP applications with SAP Enterprise SOA makes SAP NetWeaver application infrastructure technology almost inevitable for SAP customers who develop and deploy next-generation composite business applications.
Rich SAP NetWeaver application platform suite (incorporating portal, composition and development tools), BPM, application integration and enterprise application server technology offer SAP customers a one-stop platform for SAP-centric heterogeneous applications.
Evolutionary 12- to 18-month vision for metadata management, process modeling and integration, ESB, event management and BAM.

SAP's application infrastructure products are targeted first for SAP application customers and have limited appeal to non-SAP users.
Stand-alone SAP NetWeaver installed base is smaller than leading competitors' application infrastructure stacks.
In some areas (for example, ESB, BAM and event processing), SAP NetWeaver's current and planned feature set lags behind those of leading competitors by at least 12 to 18 months.
The relatively complex set of SAP NetWeaver technologies can be effectively used only by the most technically astute enterprise developers and IT operators.

Ambitious, growing and profitable company determined to rapidly grow in application infrastructure, organically and through acquisitions finalization of the acquisition of webMethods was announced on 1 June 2007).
Rapid expansion in the application infrastructure market, based on Crossvision middleware platform.
Large and loyal installed base of older business-critical technology (Natural 4GL and Adabas DBMS).
Combination of Software AG and webMethods product portfolios results in an extensive and coherent application infrastructure offering, including composition and orchestration tools, BPM technology, legacy integration, ESB, data integration, MDM and metadata management (CentraSite).

Software AG and Crossvision brand recognition is still lower than that of the leading competitors.
Uneven maturity of Crossvision components.
Challenges of maintaining sales and marketing focus as product range expands.
webMethods and Software AG have vowed to protect customer investments. To achieve this goal, Software AG has disclosed a product road map that rationalizes the resultant Software AG webMethods portfolio. However, the execution of this road map will take at least 12 to 18 months to complete.

Leadership in Java Community Process behind the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and other important specifications yields substantial name recognition and market visibility.
Massive hardware/Solaris installed base that is leveraged for selling its application infrastructure products. Strong and growing partnership with Accenture, which is bringing in large projects.
Broad and comprehensive set of technologies, designed to work with any Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition-compilant application server; innovatively packaged and priced.
Commitment to open source, including the well-received, new open-source Java EE implementation (GlassFish).

Many buyers continue to distrust Sun as a provider of mission-critical application infrastructure.
Product packaging and by-employee subscription pricing remain unproven, leaving future revenue generation a question mark.
Lacks a clearly articulated vision beyond SOA and composition.
Lacks an application ecosystem linked to future infrastructure offerings.

Substantial long-term experience with complex messaging and integration projects.
Broad, comprehensive product line with strong functionality that is optimized for heterogeneous environments and extensibility through JBI compliance. It includes one of the most extensive BAM and integration solutions.
Large specialist with significant cash reserves that successfully leverages its large high-performance messaging installed base.
Introduction of innovative Activematrix container technology in 2006 tha