Worldwide Automated Software Quality 2012–2016 Forecast: Multimodal Development with Mobile, Social, and Cloud Drives ASQ Growth

This IDC study provides an analysis of the 2012–2016 automated software quality (ASQ) market forecast. It discusses IDC's automated software quality assessment for a market that continued with strong, single-digit growth of 6.6% to $2.2 billion from growth of 4.6% in 2010 (which was a significant rebound from significant declines during 2009). As organizations continued to reinvest in ASQ solutions to address increased complexity across a variety of vectors (including business, technology, software sourcing, and diverse platform deployment with mobile, social business, and cloud), major-share ASQ solution providers experienced revenue increases. Longer term and moving into 2011–2016, the ASQ market is slated for an overall trajectory of growth with an expected CAGR of 6.2% (up from 5.3% expected in 4Q11). This will result from a variety of factors that are coming together additively. These include the impact of the role played by quality software for business and product innovation; embedded applications (in addition to traditional software deployments); the synergistic connection between security and quality; coordination between business, development, and operations for complex deployments (including mobile, social business, and embedded) sourcing (including open source and outsourcing); and software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud testing offerings. Consolidation in the ASQ arena was exemplified with the acquisitions of DeviceAnywhere by Keynote (to provide mobile testing) and service virtualization vendor acquisitions by CA Technologies and IBM of ITKO and Green Hat, respectively. IDC expects ongoing acquisitions in the 2012–2014 time frame as enterprise providers seek to broaden their ASQ portfolios.

"In a global economy that remained volatile in 2011, but with dramatically increased complexity for multimodal software development and deployment with constrained resources, we saw ongoing investment and demand for ASQ solutions. Market and product evolution will occur as larger vendors deliver more complete life-cycle management solutions as consolidation continues," says Melinda Ballou, program director for Application Life-Cycle Management at IDC. "As a result of the earlier disruption and ongoing software quality challenges, we saw strong reemergence of investment. Smaller vendors continue to play a role for market innovation, as we see from "cloud" testing, quality measurement, and agile and mobile solutions; these areas are dominated by small and medium-sized companies. We expect additional acquisitions in this space in the 2012–2014 time frame and solid ASQ growth throughout the 2012–2016 forecast period."