Summary

The Application Platform Market was valued at USD 9.18 billion in 2019, and it is expected to reach USD 12.45 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period, 2020 to 2025. In the current demand for advanced technologies, every modern application relies on a suite of software offerings such as operating systems, database management, and cloud solutions to function optimally. The whole suite of software comprises to form an application platform. The COVID-19 pandemic had a positive impact on the industry as it fueled it's growth rate to satisfy the sudden boom in application development.

Key Highlights
Traditionally, application platforms offered restricted services, platforms such as IBM mainframe offered CICS, and desktop PC only offered basic operating system. Today, both the software and hardware environments have expanded significantly, and developers often have many options. Similarly, application platforms are now broad and support all kinds of applications. They also provide a consistent experience across by enabling the same tools and skills to create different applications on diverse hardware.
Application platforms play a vital role in modern computing environments. These platforms leverage other applications and data to provide all the value that information technology brings, and also virtually every other application depends on an application platform. Since most organizations today rely on applications, there's a clear connection between the business value and application platforms. This instance vows to be one of the primary drivers for the growth of the market.
Also, cloud-based application platforms are gaining traction in the software industry. Pure cloud platform vendors such as Workday, Salesforce, and ServiceNow have been reporting significant growth. These platforms allow for the faster deployment of applications leveraging and embedding technological advancements such as AI, automation, and analytics.
Further, owing to the success of these next-generation platforms, the software industry is under pressure. For instance, application vendors such as Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft have been continuously investing in these generation platforms as they aim to provide state-of-the-art application platforms to help retain their existing customers and also further attack new customer segments.
Additionally, amidst the COVID-19 situation, businesses across industries have fast-tracked their digital transformation initiatives. The projects that were scoped to occur over months and years are now aimed to take place in a matter of days, and the ability to build, scale, and ship applications fast have become imperative. Thereby, there is a growing need for tools and platforms that streamline processes and eliminate time-consuming tasks.


Key Market Trends

aPaaS to Grow Significantly Over the Forecast Period


Enterprises are gradually shifting their focus on reducing their overall capital expenditure by utilizing modern technologies. SMEs are adopting cloud-based services such as aPaaS solutions for leveraging key benefits offered, including reduced setup and labor cost and minimized expansion cost. Also, cloud-based solutions enable enterprises to use a single, all-purpose development framework as pay-per-need and pay-per-use.
Moreover, the Information Technology industry is undergoing unprecedented change with the growing demand for intuitive customer-facing applications. Further, owing to the ever-increasing demand, there is an increase in the competition, and speed to the market has become a critical factor for many businesses. For instance, according to IBM, 80% of leading companies leverage citizen developers, i.e., non-coders with access to application development tools to drive innovations and ship software faster.
Capgemini indicates a significant step-change in enterprise cloud adoption through the increased use of cloud-native applications such as applications and services built to perform optimally in the cloud, leveraging Platform as a Service (PaaS). Cloud-native applications can empower IT to better contribute to business agility and innovation, and 15% of new enterprise applications are cloud-native currently with adoption set to increase rapidly in the next three years, jumping to 32% by the end of 2020.
Over time, many software solutions have been transformed from on-premises into the cloud, evidenced by the shift towards application programming interfaces (APIs) and Microservices. As technology stacks evolved, there is growth in the emergence of PaaS. These services offer both application development and deployment as compared to traditional Paas solutions that focus on middleware.
aPaaS platforms provide developers access to all the necessary tools that are required to iterate the projects. Some platforms also offer intuitive features such as drag and drag, hot reloading, and other 3rd path integrations like operating systems, databases, and vulnerability management, making the development easier. Further, the Platform also offers horizontal and vertical scalability. Thus, providing businesses an opportunity to additionally add and upgrade their databases.


North America to Hold Major Share


North America is expected to hold a significant market share majorly due to the mature tech market in regions such as the United States. According to CompTIA's Cyberstates report, the US tech sector's economic impact exceeds the GDP of other prominent industries such as construction, retail, and transportation.
Also, there has been a trend of increasing technological spending driven by demand and the need for software services' speedy delivery. For instance, there is robust infrastructure and platforms in the US market coupled with a large installed base of users with connected devices and bandwidth for these devices to communicate, paving the way for investments in the software and service industry.
Moreover, the software and tech services account for around half of the technology market spending, which is significantly higher than that of most other global regions. These instances showcase the positive outlook of the market and are expected to drive further the application platform's adoption in the region.
Further, in August 2020, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a five-pronged "Clean Network" effort to curb potential national security risks from China.
As part of the effort, the US will seek to ban "untrusted" Chinese apps like TikTok and WeChat from US app stores. This is anticipated to create opportunities for local companies to develop similar apps, which is expected to pave growth for the region's application platform market.


Competitive Landscape

The Application Platform Market is moderately consolidated with the presence of prominent vendors, including among others. The prominent vendors in the market are leveraging the customer's existing application investments towards the transition to emerging architectures and programming paradigms. Further, the vendors are embracing acquisitions and product enhancements to maintain their competitive position in the market.


June 2020: BMC Software Inc, announced that it had acquired Compuware, one of the leading providers of mainframe application development, delivery, and performance solutions. The company is set to enable automation and intelligence operations with the agile development and delivery, to empower the enterprise developers and operation teams to leverage the modern approach towards the building, testing and deploying of mainframe applications.
May 2020: Red Hat Inc announced the general availability of Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) 7.3. This updated application platform now features Jakarta Enterprise Edition (EE) 8 support and offers enhancements to operation on the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. The platform enables organizations to deploy and manage enterprise Java applications across all the hybrid IT environments, such as private/public and virtualized clouds.


Additional Benefits:

The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
3 months of analyst support

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