The Hindu Business Line : `Management software biz set for rapid growth'

As per various estimates, the market for EIM is set to grow to about $45-50 billion by 2007, from $27-30 billion in 2003, where management software will be a differentiator in aligning IT with business.

The Chief Technology Officer of Computer Associates International Inc, Mr Yogesh Gupta, told Business Line that the EIM market is growing at a steady pace of about 12 per cent on a large base.

Mr Gupta, who was here recently to oversee the functioning of its Indian operations and to chart out strategy for CA product development, said that the EIM market has seen significant aggregation of various elements of IT infrastructure and now covers operations, storage, security and life cycle management. Within the EIM market, the management software market accounts for about $3.5 billion where top six companies are slugging it out. These include CA (with 11.5 per cent share), IBM, EMC, Veritas, BMC and Symantec with several other smaller players.

"There are two schools of thought on the management software - while some say it is real-time information management, others like CA and IBM express this as `on demand' computing. Either way, the bottomline is that they all seek to optimise the IT infrastructure by aligning business with IT, thereby ensuring higher RoI (return on investments) on IT," Mr Gupta explained.

"The technology business is changing but its requirements remain the same - that is to make business more efficient. This is where the management software business is set to grow at a rapid pace. Leading technology providers are working closely with Chief Information Officers (CIOs) for better infrastructure management, covering not just storage, security and operations, but a whole lot of related issues that cover the life cycle management. However, the demands keep changing to newer areas such as wireless LAN security," he explained.

Take for instancea company that has 50,000 PCs, spread over several locations, and has also built in access to about 20,000 users through wireless devices. Given the security risks and management challenges, asset management of such large corporations is challenging. If a new upgrade or a security patch has to be applied to all of these users, it is possible to handle this at one go. Therefore, corporates are looking to service providers who can handle such issues, so that they can concentrate on their core business.

Emphasising the importance of IT infrastructure management, Mr Gupta said that as per Gartner group estimates, by 2006, 80 per cent of infrastructure efficiency improvements will be a direct result of IT infrastructure management processes, with only 20 per cent based on technology.