A recent CEP RFP requested marketshare data for the “CEP market“, worldwide and in specific territories. Presumably the contracts departments for large enterprises are hoping that software development tool purchases are tracked by some industry body (Nielsens maybe) just like Cornflake packets and Persil washing powder. Unfortunately, this is not the case – and of course the definition of “customer” is itself open to interpretation (someone who uses the software? someone who paid money for the software? a licensee?). Some companies also embed “CEP software” in larger categories of software (e.g. messaging or BAM); others sell only stacks that might include CEP licenses, without necessarily any use of said licenses.
Nonetheless, it is interesting to try and find some data points here. Software companies generally make “customer numbers” claims via press releases and in analyst reports, as well as SEC etc reports, and these can be collated and cross-referenced to try and come to a “big picture”. Doing so finds some interesting details such as:
- the most recent available data (for 2008-2009) gives TIBCO BusinessEvents the leading market share figure of 28% (by number of customers)
- this market share number has pretty much remained constant (except for one anomoly year, when it was 10 points higher!) for the previous 4 years
- other established CEP vendor shares are 21%, 18% and 14% – a pretty even spread overall, if the data is accurate 🙂
- the cutoff date for available data (early 2009) excludes any major effects from the large companies getting involved in CEP (IBM, Oracle, Microsoft) which, along with CEP market growth and the addition of many new startups, will likely make future numbers difficult to interpret
- vendors 2, 3 and 4 (in order of market share) report being almost exclusively (>80%) in financial / capital markets – so probably ~50% of business in CEP (to-date) is in the financial area
- overall market growth, year on year, was up to 60% initially, but dropped to just over 30% in the latest numbers. Something to do with the financial market meltdown, perhaps?
