Market Momentum: IT Management Software Market, H1 2009

Forrester's market momentum overview assists vendor strategy professionals in tracking the evolution of the IT management software (ITMS) market and in gathering intelligence about the major activities. In the first half of 2009, we tracked 165 different activities across four core categories of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), partnerships, new products, and changes in go-to-market strategies. We found that M&A activity continued its quiet period, compared with previous years, and that the main marketing focus was on product announcements. Now that Forrester has released a series of market momentum reports, it is also apparent that market momentum in ITMS is relatively quiet, compared with other markets, with the softness caused mainly by megavendors' inactivity or perhaps complacency. Marketing and strategy professionals at ITMS vendors must turn up their marketing dial to counter increased momentum in the cloud and virtualization sectors, which, while often serving as just marketing hype, is beginning to cause many ITMS buyers to re-evaluate their future spending plans.