Introduction

This report provides a summary of the capabilities of leading Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) vendors based on a quantitative assessment of their market impact and end user sentiment, as well as an objective assessment of the technology features they offer. Datamonitor also provides vendor selection guidance for enterprises looking to deploy ALM solutions.

Scope of this research

• Provides an overview of the most important trends affecting the ALM market.
• Delivers an overall comparison of ALM vendors in terms of technology strength, user perception and market impact.
• Presents a detailed view of each vendor's ALM solutions, together with advice on the suitability of these offerings to end users.
• The report covers the following vendors: Aldon, Borland, Compuware, HP, IBM, Microsoft, MKS, Polarion, Rally, Serena and TechExcel.

Research and analysis highlights

The ALM market is very competitive and vendor offerings exhibit a high degree of feature equivalence. Consequently, few vendors consistently occupy market leadership positions, with a host of competitors in close trail.

IBM leads the market by an impressive margin with its comprehensive ALM portfolio, a positive user sentiment and a deep market impact. Borland and Microsoft both offer very strong ALM solutions, garnering a positive customer sentiment and recognition as market leaders alongside IBM.

Compuware, HP, MKS and Serena emerge as the challengers. They all need to boost ALM portfolio breadth as they currently compete as specialists across a few component areas of ALM domain. Aldon, Polarion, Rally and TechExcel have impressive offerings, and are expected to gain wider recognition as they augment their installed bases.

Key reasons to purchase this research

• Gain detailed knowledge of ALM vendors' strengths with regards to technology, user sentiment and market impact.
• ALM vendors can benchmark their own performance in various key criteria against their competitors.
• Enterprise IT managers will gain valuable insight to improve their ALM purchasing decisions.