While Service Level Management (SLM) solutions are not going away, IT organizations are increasingly turning to Business Service Management (BSM) solutions in their quest to play a more critical business role, according to Enterprise Management Associates. BSM revenue grew 50 percent on average over the last two years.

User spending plans show the market for BSM beginning to surpass the market for Service Level Management (SLM) software and services.

EMA views BSM as a way for IT to get a seat at the corporate strategy table by demonstrating an understanding of real business needs. SLM supports this vision by cutting across technology silos to provide the data required to manage technology as a service to the enterprise.

"BSM solutions really are coming into their own as the market continues to mature through consolidation, adoption of proven best practices increases and a better understanding of the value of the direct link between business operations and IT becomes clear,” explained Lisa Erickson-Harris, the EMA(TM) research director in charge of the study. "SLM will remain vital to successful IT management, but we see BSM being elevated in importance as it hits the mark with CIOs who understand the need to manage IT in business terms.”

According to the research, SLM and BSM revenues continue to grow at an astounding rate for some solution providers. The IT user community now is grasping the difference between SLM and BSM, and how to apply both technologies within the enterprise.

In March 2006, EMA published a market-sizing report that put the combined SLM and BSM market value at nearly $1.4 billion total. In the new 2008 forecast, EMA splits SLM and BSM. EMA expects the SLM market to grow by at least 30 percent during the coming year, with BSM solutions growing by as much as 50 percent.

Other key findings from this research include:

• BSM enables IT to manage directly to business objectives and provides executives with visibility into IT's value to the business. SLM supports this value by measuring individual technology silos to committed quality levels.
• BMC Software, CA, HP and IBM continue to lead the charge in both SLM and BSM.
• Digital Fuel, Oblicore and Managed Objects have all demonstrated staying power and delivered innovative SLM/BSM functionality with a top-down, business perspective.
• Many enterprises view best-practice frameworks as critical to operations, and ITIL clearly leads the pack for SLM and BSM.
• The SLM and BSM market has experienced significant consolidation since the firm's 2006 market-sizing report, resulting in more robust solutions for enterprise IT.

About this study

The EMA report, "The SLM and BSM Market Forecast for 2008 to 2012," is based on evaluations of more than 45 SLM and BSM vendors and their respective market positioning and revenue performance. EMA also surveyed more than 165 IT professionals at companies that manage or plan to manage IT from a services perspective to gain insight into budget allocation and implementation plans for SLM and BSM technologies.

Complete revenue projections for SLM and BSM markets are detailed in full within the report, which will be available for purchase in late January 2008.

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