IBM emerges as the leader

BANGALORE: The research firm IDC has reported that IBM sold about $630 million worth of licenses and services into the J2EE app server market in 2003, up 6.4 percent as compared to 2002.

In the year 2002 there was a tie between IBM and BEA Systems, for the first place.

Since then its appserver revenues went down by 4.6 , getting it the second position, at number three is Oracle followed by Sun Microsystems at number four, reported IDC.

Industry analysts had actually predicted this result, not solely because WebSphere as a product fared better than WebLogic, but also because of the size and reach benefits IBM has, over BEA, said an online report.

IBM has also got the top slot in integration software market with a 17.4 percent market share and $322 million in license and services revenue for 2003, according to IDC. It is followed by Tibco at 9.1 percent, webMethods at 8 percent and last but not the least BEA getting the fourth-place with 7 percent market share.

According to analysts, BEA has all reasons to be happy, as it released its second version of WebLogic Integration, its EAI software product, only in August 2003, said the online report.