IBM Continues Middleware Leadership (And Tiger’s Master’s Opening Round Tee Time)

It’s Tuesday of Master’s week.  I caught a couple of the interviews from the media room today.  Tiger was looking very confident, but so were Phil and Rory.

I’m really digging Golf Central’s “Live from the Masters” coverage, and looking forward even more to seeing a new feature from AT&T U-Verse this year, whereby they will be following “featured” groups of golfers on individual dedicated channels.

Guess who I hope to follow?  Tiger, of course, who’s paired up with Spain’s Miguel Angel Jimenez (“The most interesting man in the world…!”) and Sang-Moon Bae, South Korea’s 25 year-old golfing wunderkind, 10:35 EST on Thursday.  Hmm, do I have any conference calls then??

Yesteday, some good news from Gartner.  They announced that based on their definition of middleware IBM has once again been named the overall marketshare leader in middleware software.

The rankings are based on total worldwide revenue for 2011 and mark the eleventh consecutive year of leadership for IBM.

According to the report, IBM was the leading software vendor with 32.1 percent market share, extending its lead to nearly double that of its closest competitor.

According to Gartner, IBM grew 12.4 percent in 2011, faster than the overall market. The worldwide application infrastructure and middleware software market grew 9.9 percent to $19.4 billion, according to Gartner.

Besides its overall lead, according to the Gartner report, IBM holds the number one market share position in key sub-markets growing faster then the overall IT market.

For example, the Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) segment grew at 11.2 percent in 2011, Gartner said. IBM was named the number one vendor in BPMS software with a 27.1 percent share; almost triple that of its closest competitor. BPMS software enables companies to develop and implement processes that help their businesses be more agile and grow.

Gartner reported that IBM continues to be number one in other growing and key areas including the Enterprise Service Bus Suites, Message Oriented Middleware Market, the Transaction Processing Monitor market and Integration Appliances.

Gartner also reported double digit growth by IBM for the Portal Products and User Interaction segment IBM’s continued market share leadership in middleware has been a key reason for the company’s strong growth.

Coming back to the Master’s, I’ll hope to add some more color before fleeing for the wilds of West Texas on Friday for my annual “gun camp” trip with some good friends.