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IBM Press Release: IBM takes top spot in Application Development tools market in Asia Pacific

Asia Pacific, December 20, 2005 - IBM Asia Pacific today announced that Gartner, Inc, has ranked IBM as the number one application development tools vendor in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) based on license revenue in 2004. This marks the second year that IBM retains the top spot in this market for Asia Pacific.

According to Gartner, IBM was the leading vendor in the overall application development tools market in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), which included Java Development Tools, Language Oriented Development Environment, Object Oriented Analysis and Design, Software Change and Configuration Management and Mainframe Testing.

The report highlighted IBM’s Rational application development tools software captured 39.7% marketshare in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) for License Revenue, in 2004, almost 17% ahead of the nearest competitor in this market.

IBM is a world leader in providing application development tools, testing software and business – driven development strategies and technologies to effectively help organizations better anticipate the needs of their customers, to align IT with business needs. This helps provide customers with a competitive edge in reacting to the fluctuating needs of the global market by providing them with software that delivers minimal integration issues, improved return on investments, reduced project risks, increased project visibility and transparency across both technology and business organizations.

“IBM’s ranking as the Number One vendor in the application development tools market for Asia Pacific validates IBM’s leadership in fulfilling customers’ business requirements with tools that enhance their business performance and productivity through Rational’s extensive end-to-end lifecycle and SOA management solutions” said Jim Koerner, Vice President, Sales and Operations, IBM Software Group, Asia Pacific. Continued Jim, “We are the only vendor that provides an integrated set of innovative and award – winning software development tools that supports everyone on a project team and across the entire software development lifecycle. Customers recognize this and are choosing Rational as their trusted development tool due to these tested and proven capabilities. IBM has years of experience in helping customers succeed and our strong expertise is reflected within and across our Rational best practices, proven product lines and professional services.”

The Gartner report also stated that India was the largest and strongest growth market in the Asia Pacific region for application development tools in terms of software license sales and is a significant destination for outsourcing of application development and maintenance work. Future trends in this market were to be focused on the growth of the real-time enterprise, and service – oriented application development.

Gartner also reported that the top two application development vendors worldwide in 2004, in terms of new license revenue, were IBM and Microsoft, and both accounted for over 70 percent marketshare worldwide.

Said Pranav Kumar, Research Director, Gartner, Inc “Larger vendors who have the ability to cross-sell products into their already-large installed bases with the help of partners, are best positioned in the overall application development market”. Mr Kumar added “IBM’s expanding partner networks, and wide range of tested application development solutions have contributed to IBM’s consistent leadership in the application development market”.

This Gartner report, entitled “Market Share: Application Development Tools, Asia/Pacific 2004” was researched and written by analysts Pranav Kumar and Nicole Latimer.