According to Gartner, IBM has maintained its leadership in the application development software space based on total software revenue in 2008. As per the report, IBM leads the industry with 27.1 percent share in 2008, growing 7.9 percent as compared to the overall segment's growth of 4 percent. Gartner reports the total worldwide market for application development in 2008 was $7.3 billion.

"In order to deliver the right solutions, on budget and on time, our customers continue to invest in offerings that improve the collaboration and automation of their software development organizations. Additionally, IBM is building upon its leadership in the application development tools market, and is now delivering the next generation collaborative, team-based IDE. We feel that the strong customer validation demonstrated in these reports further confirms that we are on the right path," said Daniel Sabbah, General Manager, IBM Rational Software.

Additionally, IBM Rational tools achieved 'top honors' in the annual Evans Data Software Development Platform User Satisfaction survey. Rational was ranked higher than development tool offerings from several competitors. The survey polled 1,200 worldwide developers.

"IBM is a leading example of a vendor that is moving beyond simply selling point products to customers, but rather helping meet their evolving needs by offering a complete, end-to-end application lifecycle management solution (ALM)," said John Andrews, President and CEO, Evans Data.

Dear Friends,

ChannelTimes.com is coming up with an interactive column - Ask an Expert. This initiative is our endeavor to help you address woes and issues in the shortest possible time from our panel of experts.

We'll shortly reveal the names of panel members. Queries can be sent on kapil.mudholkar@utvnet.com