Highs & Lows In A Segmented Collaborative Applications Market.

Like a family made up of many different personalities, the collaborative applications market consists of younger and older segments that interact on some levels while operating independently on others. The biggest segment achieves growth in large part by cannibalizing users from other segments, while smaller segments cannot seem to decide whether other collaborative segments are helping or hurting. The resulting mix of growth highs and lows is a key message of a new IDC report titled Collaborative Applications Market Forecast and Analysis, 2000-2004.

According to IDC, the collaborative applications market - which consists of solutions for integrated collaborative environments (ICE), team collaborative applications (TCA), standalone enterprise email, standalone service provider email, real-time data conferencing, and group calendaring/scheduling - is expected to hit $3.1 billion in software revenues worldwide this year. Examples of how market factors may yield very different growth results from one application segment to the next including the following:

* Segments are at different phases of development ranging from introduction (real-time data conferencing) to decline (standalone service provider email).

* The negative impact of ICE solutions' integration of broad collaborative functionality on standalone solutions ranges from limited (TCA) to fatal (standalone enterprise email).

* The emergence of hosted application services will boost demand for certain applications (standalone service provider email) and sustain growth for other enterprise saturated markets (ICE).

* The fastest-growing segments of the market in terms of revenues will be team collaborative applications, followed by standalone service provider email and real-time conferencing software.