As the number of “moving parts” in the enterprise IT environment continue to increase—and as companies seek to more adaptively mix-and-match those moving parts in response to ever-changing market opportunities and business challenges—middleware solution providers are likely to profit.
That’s the conclusion drawn by global technology research and advisory firm Ovum in a new report entitled “2015 Trends to Watch: Integration and Middleware.” The report asserts that enterprises have to modernize their infrastructure if they are to enhance their agility without inflating their IT budgets. And much of that modernization is likely to come in the form of new middleware-based integration models—for which enterprise IT will have to shell out $16.3 billion next year, a 9.3 percent increase over 2014 spending levels.
In particular, report author and Ovum Senior Analyst Saurabh Sharma sees cloud-based “as-a-service” integration solutions becoming increasingly attractive to enterprises that want fast access to highly sophisticated middleware without having to engage in capex-intensive projects or build out their own internal operational capabilities.
Mobility and Internet of things (IoT) are especially responsible for the integration pressures enterprise IT organizations face. In the case of mobility, that’s because the value a mobile app delivers is often directly related to the number and diversity of back-end systems it touches. In the case of IoT, integration challenges are intensified because device telemetry is not yet well-standardized.
Add to these factors the need to digitally connect with customers, suppliers, partners, third-party data feeds, and emerging cloud service providers—and it’s no wonder enterprises are hungry for an easier, more flexible way of doing things.
“Enterprises need to undertake integration infrastructure modernization to effectively exploit the quartet of digitalization, mobility, cloud, and IoT for driving business growth,” Sharma said. “There will be less inertia to a shift toward agile approaches to integration and/or cloud-based integration services, and this will translate into a growing market opportunity for both established and specialized integration vendors.”
