HP Expands Market Share

HP today announced that Mercury, now part of the HP Software organization, has been declared the uncontested revenue leader in the distributed automated software quality (DASQ) market by IDC, a leading analyst firm

The DASQ market is a subset of the overall automated software quality (ASQ) market that supports quality for distributed applications. It excludes revenue from areas such as mainframe-based ASQ tools, those aimed at standalone PC or minicomputer environments and special-purpose testing tools like those used for device driver testing and embedded systems.

According to IDC's research, Mercury was once again the market revenue leader, growing faster than the market in 2005 and increasing its market share to 61 percent - nearly four times the market share of its nearest competitor. Mercury continued to be the engine behind much of the $947.6 million in growth the DASQ market saw in 2005, a 20.4 percent increase over 2004.

IDC remains optimistic about the continued growth prospects of the ASQ and DASQ markets as they are still under-penetrated and testing is still largely a manual process in many enterprises.

"HP obviously is the uncontested revenue leader in the DASQ market," said Melinda Ballou, program director in the Application Development and Deployment Service at IDC and author of the report. "Given Mercury's historic excellence in execution and the role beginning to be played by key Mercury executives within HP, IDC expects HP to continue to dominate - and grow its share of - the DASQ market."

The report notes that HP grew its share of the DASQ market in 2005 while its two nearest competitors - IBM and Compuware - lost share, although both demonstrated some revenue growth. IDC's updated ASQ forecast with 2006 numbers will be published by the second quarter of 2007.

"CIO accountability for the quality and performance of business-critical applications has never been higher, fueling HP's desire to continue addressing key challenges in quality management better than the competition," said Yuval Scarlat, vice president, Application Delivery Products and Strategy, Software, HP. "HP's market-leading quality management offerings, market share momentum and relentless focus on customers position us to capitalize on this large and under-penetrated market."

The IDC report, "Worldwide Distributed Automated Software Quality Tools 2006-2010 Forecast and 2005 Vendor Shares," is available for download at www.mercury.com/idcreport.

IDC's Ballou will present her findings in a webinar, titled "New Developments in Quality Assurance - Adoption and Trends for Business Agility," on Thursday, March 1 at 10 a.m. PT - HP.