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Hype Cycle for Application Development 2007

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Research

Publication Date: 29 June 2007

ID Number: G00147982

Hype Cycle for Application Development, 2007

Jim Duggan, Daniel B. Stang, Partha Iyengar, Thomas E. Murphy, Allie Young, David Norton,
Mark Driver, L. Frank Kenney, Greta A. James, Mark A. Beyer, Roy W. Schulte, Yefim V. Natis,
David Gootzit, Frances Karamouzis, Lorrie Scardino, Michael J. Blechar, David Newman, Joseph
Feiman, Neil MacDonald, Donald Feinberg, Ray Valdes, Matt Light, David W. Cearley, David W.
McCoy, Jess Thompson

A shift to process and service orientation is altering staffing, tools and methods of
software development. In parallel, governance, planning, control and quality assurance
techniques are being refined and strengthened to drive more predictability and meet the
challenges of global sourcing.

2007 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form
without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to
be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although
Gartner's research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, Gartner does not provide legal
advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner shall have no liability for errors,
omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein
are subject to change without notice.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Analysis ............................................................................................................................................. 4
What You Need to Know ...................................................................................................... 4
The Hype Cycle .................................................................................................................... 4
The Priority Matrix ................................................................................................................ 4
On the Rise........................................................................................................................... 6
Data Service Architectures ...................................................................................... 6
Metadata Ontology Management ............................................................................ 7
Information-Centric Infrastructure............................................................................ 8
SDLC Security Methodologies ................................................................................ 9
SOA Testing .......................................................................................................... 10
Collaborative Tools for the Software Development Life Cycle .............................. 10
Enterprise Information Management ..................................................................... 11
Application Quality Dashboards ............................................................................ 12
Event-Driven Architecture...................................................................................... 13
Metadata Repositories........................................................................................... 14
RIA Platforms ........................................................................................................ 16
At the Peak ......................................................................................................................... 17
Application Testing Services ................................................................................. 17
SOA Governance Technologies............................................................................ 19
Globally Sourced Testing ...................................................................................... 21
Model-Driven Architectures ................................................................................... 22
Scriptless Testing .................................................................................................. 23
Architected, Model-Driven SODA.......................................................................... 24
Enterprise Architecture Tools ................................................................................ 25
Application Security Testing .................................................................................. 26
Sliding Into the Trough ....................................................................................................... 27
Project and Portfolio Management ........................................................................ 27
Business Application Package Testing ................................................................. 28
Agile Development Methodology........................................................................... 29
Unit Testing ........................................................................................................... 30
ARAD SODA ......................................................................................................... 31
SOA ....................................................................................................................... 32
Climbing the Slope ............................................................................................................. 33
Enterprise Software Change and Configuration Management.............................. 33
Enterprise Portals .................................................................................................. 33
Microsoft .NET Application Platform...................................................................... 34
OOA&D Methodologies ......................................................................................... 36
Linux as a Mission-Critical DBMS Platform........................................................... 37
Performance Testing ............................................................................................. 38
Open-Source Development Tools ......................................................................... 38
Business Process Analysis.................................................................................... 39
Entering the Plateau ........................................................................................................... 40
Automated Testing ................................................................................................ 40
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition .......................................................................... 41
Appendices ......................................................................................................................... 43
Hype Cycle Phases, Benefit Ratings and Maturity Levels .................................... 45
Recommended Reading.................................................................................................................. 46

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Page 2 of 47

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Hype Cycle Phases ........................................................................................................... 45
Table 2. Benefit Ratings .................................................................................................................. 45
Table 3. Maturity Levels .................................................................................................................. 46

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Application Development, 2007................................................................. 4
Figure 2. Matrix for Application Development, 2007 ......................................................................... 5
Figure 3. Hype Cycle for Application Development, 2006............................................................... 43

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

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ANALYSIS

What You Need to Know

Technology and governance advances are improving the speed and quality of software delivery
and the business utility of the products. Service orientation is becoming the most common
architectural approach. Techniques and tools to improve the planning, measurement, control and
reporting of application development and delivery activities are advancing quickly.

The Hype Cycle

Application development activities are changing in two ways: 1) process and service orientation is
altering the staffing, tooling and methods being used to carry software from business need to
production code, and 2) governance, planning, control and quality assurance (QA) techniques are
being refined and strengthened to drive more predictability and to meet the challenges of global
sourcing.
Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Application Development, 2007
visibility
Architected, Model-Driven SODA
Enterprise Architecture Tools

Scriptless Testing
Model-Driven Architectures
Globally Sourced Testing
SOA Governance Technologies
Application Testing Services
RIA Platforms
Metadata Repositories
Event-Driven Architecture

Application Security Testing

Java Platform, Enterprise Edition
Automated Testing
Project and Portfolio
Management

Application Quality
Dashboards
Enterprise Information
Management

Agile
Development
Methodology

Business Application
Package Testing

Collaborative Tools
for the Software
Development Life Cycle
Unit Testing
SOA Testing
SDLC Security
Methodologies
ARAD SODA
Information-Centric
Infrastructure
Metadata Ontology Management
Data Service Architectures

Open-Source
Development Tools
Business Process Analysis
Performance Testing
Linux as a Mission-Critical DBMS Platform

SOA

OOA&D Methodologies
Microsoft .NET Application Platform
Enterprise Portals
Enterprise Software Change and
Configuration Management

As of June 2007

Technology
Trigger

Peak of
Inflated
Expectations

Trough of
Disillusionment

Slope of Enlightenment

Plateau of
Productivity

time
Years to mainstream adoption:
less than 2 years

2 to 5 years

5 to 10 years

more than 10 years

obsolete
before plateau

Source: Gartner (June 2007)

The Priority Matrix

Financial effectiveness has become a major issue for many application groups. They are seeking
more-formal processes to help achieve the goal of running IT as a business, with budget

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

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discipline and effective planning techniques that lead to predictable results. Although individually
incremental, the convergence of changes in the governance, planning and control techniques are
transformative when taken across all topic areas.
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) leads to service-oriented development and requires
substantial changes in staffing, tooling and practice throughout development organizations.
Business process management (BPM) techniques move companies in the same direction.
Ultimately, the distinctions between service-oriented development of applications (SODA) and
BPM will narrow, as both marginalize the distinctions between development time and runtime
systems and processes.
Figure 2. Matrix for Application Development, 2007

benefit

years to mainstream adoption

less than 2 years

transformational

Enterprise Portals

2 to 5 years
Data Service
Architectures
SOA

5 to 10 years

more than 10 years

Event-Driven Architecture
Information-Centric
Infrastructure

SOA Testing

high

ARAD SODA
Automated Testing
Business Application
Package Testing
Java Enterprise Edition
Linux as a MissionCritical DBMS Platform

Application Quality
Dashboards

Enterprise Information
Management

Application Security
Testing

Model-Driven
Architectures

Architected, Model-Driven
SODA

Scriptless Testing

Collaborative Tools for the

Software Development
Life Cycle
Enterprise Architecture
Tools
Globally Sourced Testing
Metadata Repositories
Microsoft .NET Application
Platform
Project and Portfolio
Management
RIA Platforms
SOA Governance
Technologies

moderate

Business Process
Analysis

Application Testing
Services

Agile Development
Methodology

OOA&D Methodologies

Enterprise Software
Change and Configuration
Management

Metadata Ontology
Management

Performance Testing
Unit Testing

Open-Source
Development Tools

SDLC Security
Methodologies

low
As of June 2007

Source: Gartner (June 2007)

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On the Rise
Data Service Architectures
Analysis By: Mark Beyer
Definition: Data services consist of processing routines that provide direct data manipulation
pertaining to the delivery, transformation and the logical and semantic reconciliation of data.
Unlike point-to-point data integration solutions, data services de-couple data storage, security and
mode of delivery from each other, as well as from individual applications, to deliver them as
independently designed and deployed functionality that can be connected via a registry or
composite processing framework. Data services can be used in a networked fashion that is
orchestrated through a composite processing model or designed separately, then reused in
various, larger-grained processes.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Data services are, by their nature, a new style of
data access strategy that replaces the data management, access and storage duties currently
deployed in an application-specific manner. Data services architecture is merely a sub-class or
category of SOA that does not form a new architecture, but brings emphasis to the varying
services that exist within SOA. Most of the large vendors have announced road maps and plans
to pursue some variant of the data service approach, but this is an evolutionary architectural style
that does not warrant "rip and replace" at this time and will coexist with current application design
techniques. Disillusionment will occur as organizations realize the granularity required to deploy
this type of architecture, especially relative to the differences between handling data via a
business operational process vs. data handling via industry delivery concepts.
User Advice: Users should focus on delivering a semantic layer that portrays the use of data and
information in the organization and, at the same time, begin developing a logical business model.
The logical and semantic model should be interpreted to the physical repositories throughout the
organization creating a physical-to-logical-model reconciliation. In 2006, this technology class
was specifically focused on information in the former "structured" data class only. In 2007, initial
advances in using model-to-model (M2M) language communication via metadata operators are
blended into this technology. The M2M introduction caused a temporary retrograde in the
technology position and at the same time will accelerate its movement along the cycle. Existing
data integration vendors: extraction, transformation and loading (ETL), enterprise integration
information (EII) and enterprise application integration, have begun to pursue common metadata
repositories used as a core library to deploy all data delivery modes but have not built machine
intelligence into optimization strategies. Organizations should eschew vendor development
platforms that deny or refute the requirement for interoperability.
Business Impact: Data services are not an excuse for each organization to write its own, unique
database management system (DBMS), as most DBMSs both store data and provide ready
access. Data services can sever the tight links between application interface development and
the more infrastructure-style decisions of database platforms, operating systems (OSs) and
hardware. Specifically, the metadata interpretation between business process models, semantic
usage models and logical/physical data models will enhance the overall adaptiveness of IT
solutions. This will create a portability of applications to lower-cost repository environments when
appropriate and create a direct corollary between the cost of information management and the
value of the information delivered by delivering semantically consistent data and information to
any available presentation format. This is opposed to the current scenario in which monolithic
application design can drive infrastructure costs up because of their dependence on specific
platform or DBMS capabilities.
Benefit Rating: Transformational

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Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience

Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: Ab Initio; Business Objects; IBM; Informatica; Oracle
Recommended Reading: "The Emerging Vision for Data Services: Becoming InformationCentric in an SOA World"
"Data Integration Is Key to Successful Service-Oriented Architecture Implementations"
"Service-Oriented Business Applications Require EIM Strategy"

Metadata Ontology Management

Analysis By: Mark Beyer; Michael Blechar
Definition: Metadata ontology management addresses the problem of information assets created
by different processes, defined by different business terms and interpreted through disparate
semantics, to produce competing taxonomies. Ontology management recognizes that
simultaneous metadata descriptions can exist for each information asset and proceeds to
reconcile them. The various metadata sources include business process modeling, EII, ETL,
metadata repository technologies and others. Ontology management allows business analysts to
leverage the value of these assets better, while promoting improved understanding across
business units and IT management personnel.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Business organizations are just embarking on the
use of metadata in determining the value of data points and information delivered through
information technology systems. One high business value use of metadata is found in the ability
to justify and identify how decisions were made, based on information available at any given time.
The new demand for metadata that describes end-user interpretations of "fact" will force the
introduction of annotation metadata in daily workflows.
Presently, most metadata management functionality is a feature of existing metadata tools limited
to model extension with end-user defined columns and metadata versioning with no workflow or
administrative enforcement beyond the development team. With the advent of SOAs and the
active use of metadata to control services flow, it will become imperative that the business
becomes involved in linking the BPM workflows with information management workflows. This will
force new metadata management tools development with a radically different business user
interface.
User Advice:
1. Identify data management and integration tools that include metadata repository
management interfaces, supporting metadata model extensions.
2. Identify data management and integration tools that expose metadata repositories via
application programming interfaces (APIs) and service calls, versus metadata
import/export functionality only.
3. Acclimate business personnel to their role in creating information assets and the
importance of metadata as a precursor to introducing these practices.
4. Initiate a data administration task to capture various business ontologies of integrated
information resources with the understanding that ontology evolves continuously.

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Business Impact: Tighter integration between business process changes and IT systems
change. Business units and users will be able to relay their concerns better regarding use of
information assets throughout the organization. Better assessment by business analysts on the
risks and benefits that accrue in the business regarding maintenance and security of information
assets.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity: Embryonic

Information-Centric Infrastructure
Analysis By: David Newman
Definition: Information-centric infrastructure (ICI) is a technology framework that enables
information producers and information consumers to organize, share and exchange any content
(structured and unstructured data, for example), anytime, anywhere. It is the technology building
block within an organization's enterprise information management (EIM) program. Since different
systems use different formats and different standards to share and exchange different types of
information, the technologies that make up an ICI ensure that common processes applied to
common content will produce similar results.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The vision for an ICI will be adopted by
organizations seeking to bring a greater balance to their integration activities to address cost and
complexity issues associated with silo-based, application-centric development. One of the
reasons organizations cannot respond as quickly as market conditions dictate is because much of
the information has been isolated within applications each fulfilling its own unique (processdriven) requirements. As demands for access to information sources increase, organizations will
use an ICI as their technical foundation to facilitate the convergence of different types of content
required by industry "ecosystems" and trade exchanges. This will help resolve issues around infoglut, and will improve application integration capabilities during migration toward SOAs.
User Advice: Recognize that different project teams use different applications, formats and
standards to exchange information. Look for common ways to normalize and extract meaning
from all types of content so that it can be exchanged across the organization. Use existing system
analysis and designs as starting points to develop common models, which can then be shared by
different processing components and system entities. Use existing methods of content-centric
processing to identify gaps that need to be filled to support ICI requirements. For instance,
determine the usefulness of the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework Data Reference
Model (version 2.0) to your industry regardless of whether you are a commercial or
government organization. Exploit the use of emerging standards (such as XML), or data and
metadata interchange and create a common components library of metadata objects based on
corporate standards, thereby promoting wide-scale reuse.
Business Impact: An ICI brings balance to many application-driven environments because it
"normalizes" the chaos caused by having different and diverse standards, formats and protocols.
It extracts meaning and delivers context so that each content instance can be shared and
exchanged to support a variety of business process needs by identifying, abstracting and
rationalizing commonalities across content; applying semantics for information exchange and
interoperability; and implementing metadata management for discovery, reuse and repurpose.
Organizations failing to invest in building out an ICI by 2015 will experience a 30% increase in
overhead costs to manage their IT operations. An ICI will make far greater use of emerging

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technologies than most companies are used to. It is the inevitable outcome of decoupling
application logic from data management requirements (as seen in SOA).
Benefit Rating: Transformational
Market Penetration: Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
Recommended Reading: "Key Issues for Information-Centric Infrastructures, 2007"
"Gartner Defines the Information-Centric Infrastructure"
"Information-Centric Infrastructure: Application Integration Via Content"
"Predicts 2007: Information Infrastructure Emerges"

SDLC Security Methodologies

Analysis By: Joseph Feiman
Definition: Software development life cycle (SDLC) methodologies are based on the principle
that security implementation shouldn't be an isolated process, but rather part of a comprehensive
software engineering process. The methodologies should make security engineering a
measurable, repeatable, predictable and controlled discipline. They also will enable detection,
correction and prevention of application vulnerabilities.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: We expect that the adoption of SDLC security
methodologies will follow the standard pattern of methodologies, such as the Capability Maturity
Model. Only a few organizations (primarily external service providers ESPs) will reach the
highest level of maturity, while most will remain at the lower levels. Achieving lower levels of
maturity will take approximately 18 months or more; in addition, it will take the same amount of
time to move up to each of the higher levels.
User Advice: To enable the detection, correction and prevention of security vulnerabilities in
applications, ESPs should consider formally adopting SDLC security methodologies to confirm
their adherence to practices that embed security into systems and software engineering. Formal
adoption may also prove to potential clients that ESPs are competent with secure software
engineering. Enterprises' internal IT departments should informally (that is, without certification)
consider selecting and adopting the methodologies' best practices that meet their needs and
match their means.
Business Impact: The objective of SDLC security methodologies is to reduce security risks by
making systems' security engineering a measurable, repeatable, predictable and controlled
discipline. The discipline should ensure that security threats and vulnerabilities have been
reviewed, their impact recognized, that risks have been assessed, and that appropriate,
preventive organizational and management measures have been applied to the software
engineering process.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: One percent to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: International Organization for Standardization; International Systems Security
Engineering Association; Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University

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Collaborative Tools for the Software Development Life Cycle

Analysis By: James Duggan
Definition: SDLC collaborative tools enable communication and collaboration across cultural,
geographical and professional boundaries throughout the application life cycle. The features,
which were developed in stand-alone products (such as wikis and electronic-meeting systems),
are now appearing in multiple development tool markets.
The addition of collaboration features can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of all phases
of application development, including analysis, design, construction, testing and deployment,
integration, maintenance and enhancement. These features enable customer-to-developer
understanding, as well as knowledge capture and transfer. Collaboration features complement
and enhance the structured coordination tools that make up most of the application life cycle
management suites for example, workflow, change management and project management
solutions.
Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982
2007 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Page 10 of 47

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Application delivery globalization in which

applications are built and maintained by teams working all over the world is growing. However,
this growth increases the risk of miscommunication and distortion. As the globalization of
application delivery accelerates, it raises the priorities and expedience of technology vendors'
efforts to address growing demand. Broad adoption will require collaboration features to support
multiple sites, enable federated control and remote monitoring, and incorporate intellectual
property and asset protection.
User Advice: Coordinate tool evaluation geographically to ensure full consideration of cultural
and skill differences across groups. Pilot changes in the process to ensure that distance effects
are understood.
Business Impact: Gartner expects significant mitigation of the risks posed by the globalization of
application delivery. Because of collaborative and globally distributed efforts, cost savings will
occur, and revenue will be produced by the new applications.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: One percent to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: BMC Software; CollabNet; Digite; iRise; Sofea; VA Software

Enterprise Information Management

Analysis By: David Newman
Definition: EIM is an integrative discipline for structuring, describing and governing information
assets, regardless of organizational and technological boundaries, to improve operational
efficiency, promote transparency and enable business insight. EIM is operationalized as a
program with a defined charter, budget and resource plan.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Many organizations have silos of information:
inconsistent, inaccurate and conflicting sources with no "single version of the truth." Project-level
information management techniques have caused issues in data quality and accessibility. This
has led to higher costs, integration complexity, risk and unnecessary duplication of data and
process.
Results from a Gartner study confirm that EIM is in the early-adopter stage. Findings suggest that
the EIM trend will need frameworks, case studies and maturity models to help guide
organizations through the benefit realization curve. Certain business drivers, such as compliance,
will accelerate adoption as organizations look to fulfill transparency and efficiency objectives from
upstream systems to downstream applications. Other triggers for adoption include the information
management implications of new development models, such as SOA. SOA places greater
emphasis on a disciplined approach to information management. Enterprises will use EIM to
support the increased demands for governance and accountability of information assets through
formalized data quality and stewardship activities. Adoption toward EIM will also increase as
pressure intensifies to consolidate related technologies within organizations for managing both
structured and unstructured information assets. Organizations will look for a common framework
or infrastructure to converge overlapping technologies and projects in master data management,
business intelligence, metadata management, data integration, information access and content
management. Organizations will adopt EIM in stages, looking first at foundational activities such
as metadata management, master data management, and data mart consolidation; data quality
activities; and data stewardship role definition.

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User Advice: End-user clients should resist vendor claims that their products "do" EIM. EIM is
not a technology market. Clients should connect certain technologies and projects (such as
master data management, metadata management, information life cycle management, content
management and data integration) as part of an EIM program.
Secure senior-level commitment for EIM as a way to overcome information barriers, exploit
information as a strategic resource, and fuel the drive toward enterprise agility. Use pressures for
improving IT flexibility, adaptability, productivity and transparency as part of the EIM businesscase justification. Grow the EIM program incrementally. Pursue foundational EIM activities such
as master data management and metadata management. Address operational activities, such as
defining the EIM strategy, creating a charter and aligning resources to the program.
Operationalize EIM with a defined budget and resource plan. Establish an ICI to share and
exchange all types of content. Implement governance processes such as stewardship and data
quality initiatives. Set performance metrics (such as reducing the number of point-to-point
interfaces or conflicting data sources) to demonstrate value.
Business Impact: EIM is foundational to complex business processes and strategic initiatives.
By organizing related information management technologies into a common, ICI, an EIM program
can reduce transaction costs across companies and improve the consistency, quality and
governance of information assets. EIM supports transparency objectives in compliance and legal
discovery. It breaks down information silos by facilitating the decoupling of data from applications
a key aspect of successful SOAs. It establishes a single version of the truth for master data
assets. EIM institutes information governance processes to ensure all information assets adhere
to quality, security and accessibility standards. Key components of EIM (for example, master data
management, global data synchronization, semantic reconciliation, metadata management, data
integration and content management) have been observed across multiple industries (such as
banking, investment services, consumer goods, retail and life sciences).
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: One percent to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
Recommended Reading: "Business Drivers and Issues in Enterprise Information Management"
"Mastering Master Data Management"
"From IM to EIM: An Adoption Model"
"Data Integration Is Key to Successful Service-Oriented Architecture Implementations"
"Gartner Study on EIM Highlights Early Adopter Trends and Issues"
"Gartner Definition Clarifies the Role of Enterprise Information Management"
"Key Issues for Enterprise Information Management, 2007"

Application Quality Dashboards

Analysis By: Thomas Murphy
Definition: These tools give an overall view of code quality and integrate the various forms of
testing to enable a more cohesive test strategy. They are being driven from multiple entry points,
including integrated application life cycle management suites, quality management dashboards
and portfolio management tools. Initial support only includes functional and performance testing
integration. It misses integration with other testing tasks, such as static analysis for security, code

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quality and standards compliance. Project-management-office-centric tools will also include

information from operational and application management tools to better understand the risks,
benefits and costs of applications in production, enabling improved investment choices.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Acquisition and competition are pushing these
tools along rapidly. Eclipse is also shaping the market with the inclusion of several underlying
frameworks and metamodels that provide a foundation for integration and reporting. However,
expectations will lead implementation quality. Continued integration with process guidance and
the rest of the life cycle will drive maturity. Vendors will still need to expand product coverage to
adequately support all phases of the testing life cycle. Operational tools will take an approach
oriented toward determining whether the application passed the appropriate gates to be
deployed, and portfolio tools will blend this information with operational and help-desk data to
help determine projects. Overall, improved reporting will help organizations that use reports to
locate areas of concern and measure improvements.
User Advice: Expect to require products from multiple software vendors for three to five years,
as well as a lack of overall integration of quality metrics reporting. Seek tools with extensible
repositories and that simplify the integration of additional data sources.
Business Impact: Metrics and a better understanding of software quality can lead to better
planning and deployment of resources.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: One percent to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Sample Vendors: 6th Sense Analytics; Atlassian Software Systems; Borland; Compuware;
Enerjy; IBM; JetBrains; Mercury; Microsoft; Polarion

Event-Driven Architecture
Analysis By: Roy Schulte; Yefim Natis
Definition: Event-driven architecture (EDA) is a subset of the more general topic of event
processing. EDA is an architectural style in which some of the elements of the application
execute in response to the arrival of event objects. An element decides whether to act and how to
act based on the incoming event objects. In EDA, the event objects are delivered in messages
that do not specify any method name (such messages are called event notifications).The event
source does not tell the event receiver what operation to perform. An event is something that
happens (or does not happen, but was expected or thought possible). Examples include a stock
trade, customer order, address change, and a shipment arriving or failing to arrive (under
specified conditions). An event may be documented in software by creating an event object
(sometimes called plain "event," which then is a second meaning for the term). An event (object)
represents or records a happening ("ordinary") event. Examples of event objects include a
message from a financial data feed (a stock tick), an XML document containing an order or a
database row. In casual discussion, programmers often call the message that conveys an event
object an "event."
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Computer systems have used event processing in
many different ways for decades. Event processing is moving through the Hype Cycle now
because its concepts are being applied more broadly and on a higher level. Business events,
such as purchase orders, address changes, payments, credit card transactions or Web "clicks"
are being used as a focus in application design. This contrasts to past treatments of events where
business applications addressed events more indirectly, and event modeling was considered to
Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982
2007 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Page 13 of 47

be secondary to data modeling, object modeling and process modeling. Businesses have always
been real-time, event-driven systems, but now more aspects of their application systems are also
real-time systems. EDA concepts are also used on a technical level to make application servers
and other software more-efficient and scalable. The spread of other types of SOA (conventional,
request/reply SOA) is also helping to pave the way for EDA because some of the concepts,
middleware tools and organizational strategies are the same.
User Advice: In an era of accelerating business processes, pervasive computing and exploding
data volumes, companies must master event processing if they are to thrive. Companies should
use event processing in two ways: to engineer more-flexible application software through the use
of message-driven processing, and to gain better insight into current business conditions through
complex-event processing (CEP). Architects can use available methodologies and tools to build
good EDA applications, but must consciously impose an explicit focus on events because
standard methodologies and tools do not yet make events first-class citizens in the development
process. Companies should implement EDA as part of their SOA strategy because many of the
same middleware tools and organizational techniques (such as using an SOA center of
excellence [COE] for EDA and for other kinds of SOA) apply. Companies should not implement
request/reply SOA now and wait for one or two years to implement EDA SOA because a
request/reply-only SOA strategy will not be able to support some business requirements well.
Business Impact: EDA is relevant in every industry. Large companies experience literally trillions
of ordinary business events every day, although only a minority of these are represented as event
objects, and only a tiny minority of those event objects are fully exploited for their maximum
information value. The number and size of event streams are growing as the cost of computing
and networking continues to drop. Companies now generate data on events that were never
reported in the past. The CEP type of business EDA was first used in financial trading, energy
trading, supply chain management, fraud detection, homeland security, telecommunications,
customer contact centers, logistics and sensor networks, such as those based on radio frequency
identification (RFID). Event processing is a key enabler in business activity monitoring (BAM),
which makes business operations more visible to end users.
Benefit Rating: Transformational
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Sample Vendors: Actimize; Agent Logic; Agentis Software; Aleri; Avaya; Axeda; BEA Systems;
coral8; Cordys; Event Zero; Exegy; firstRain; IBM; jNetX; Kabira; Kx Systems; open cloud;
Oracle; Progress Software/Apama; Red Hat (Mobicents); Rhysome; SAP; SeeWhy; StreamBase
Systems; Sun; Sybase; Syndera; Synthean; Systar SA; Tibco Software; Truviso; Vayusphere;
Vhayu; Vitria Technology; WareLite

Metadata Repositories
Analysis By: Michael Blechar; Jess Thompson
Definition: Metadata is an abstracted level of information about the characteristics of an artifact,
such as its name, location, perceived importance, quality or value to the organization, and
relationship to other artifacts. Technologies called "metadata repositories" are used to document,
manage and perform analysis (such as change impact analysis and gap analysis) on metadata in
the form of artifacts representing assets that the enterprise wants to manage. Repositories cover
a wide spectrum of metadata/artifacts, such as those related to business processes, components,
data/information, frameworks, hardware, organizational structure, services and software in

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support of focus areas like application development, data architecture, data warehousing and
enterprise architecture (EA).
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Most organizations that have tried to implement a
single enterprise metadata repository have failed to meet the expected return on investment.
Community-based repositories supporting business process modeling and analysis, SOA and
data integration have shown benefits in improved quality and productivity through an improved
understanding of the artifacts, impact queries and the reuse of assets such as services and
components. For the near future, there will be no proved, viable solution that federates multiple
metadata repositories (or federates repositories with other technologies that contain metadata,
like service registries holding runtime metadata artifacts) sufficiently to satisfy the needs of
organizations.
Mainstream IT organizations will find that the most pragmatic approach to metadata management
and reporting is to have multiple, community-based repositories, which have some degree of
federation and synchronization. Although it is possible to create federated queries across multiple
repositories, many organizations still may want to consolidate and aggregate selected metadata
information from disparate sources into a "metadata warehouse" for ease of reporting and for ad
hoc query purposes. Leading metadata repository vendors are well-positioned to meet this need,
but competitors will emerge, including large, independent software vendors (ISVs), which will look
to provide these capabilities in their tool suites. Large vendors, such as IBM, Oracle and SAP, are
adding repositories or are improving their repository support for design-time and runtime
platforms to enhance metadata management support for their development and deployment
environment. As a result, Gartner expects to see a broader degree of acceptance by customers,
along with a consolidation in this market during the next few years. We position metadata
repositories as being two to five years from plateau, because most Global 1000 companies have
purchased metadata repositories and are not yet aggressively seeking replacements, and
because most new buyers are less-sophisticated IT organizations looking to large ISVs to
improve their federation capabilities before committing to the new tools. As a result, most
repository purchases will be tactical in nature based on the needs of specific communities, such
as data warehousing and SOAs.
User Advice: Owing to the diversification and consolidation of metadata management solutions,
the enterprise uber-repository market no longer exists. Consider the acquisition or extension of
using a metadata repository as part of moving to SOAs, or consider implementing BPM, data
architecture, data warehousing and EA initiatives. Most organizations will be best-served by living
with metadata in multiple tools or by using different repositories based on communities of interest,
with some limited bridging or synchronization to promote the reuse and leveraging of knowledge
and effort. Organizations that need to approximate the capabilities of an enterprise metadata
repository are still best-served by solutions from leading repository vendors.
Business Impact: Metadata repository technology can be applied to aspects of business,
enterprise, information and technical architectures, including the portfolio management and
cataloging of software services and components; business models; data-warehousing ETL rules;
business intelligence transformations and queries; data architecture; electronic data interchange;
and outsourcing engagements.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Sample Vendors: Allen Systems Group; BEA Systems; LogicLibrary

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Business Impact: A user experience that is perceptively better than other offerings in a product
category can provide sustainable, competitive advantage. Consider the flagship examples of the
RIA/Ajax genre, such as Google's Gmail, Maps and Calendar applications, which achieved high
visibility and strong adoption despite entering late into a mature and stable product category.
However, competitive advantage is not a guaranteed result of RIA technology deployment, and
depends on innovations in usability (independent of technology) and on server-side architectures
that complement client-side user interface technology. Many organizations do not have the
process maturity to deliver a consumer-grade user experience and will need to acquire talent or
consulting resources to achieve positive business impact.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging

At the Peak
Application Testing Services
Analysis By: Frances Karamouzis; Allie Young; Lorrie Scardino
Definition: Application testing services include all types of validation, verification and testing
services for quality control and assurance within the application development life cycle to deliver
software that is developed according to defined specifications and will operate in a production
environment. Testing services, which have always been an integral part of the application
development life cycle, are now increasingly carved out as a separate competency area, often
supported by a distinct development methodology. Testing services may be performed manually
or with automation tools, and carried out by internal IT resources or by ESPs.
The scope of application testing services includes various functions that go by different names,
such as unit testing (which is done by the application developers), integration testing, system
testing, functional testing, regression testing, performance/stress testing, usability testing and
security testing. Application testing applies to custom application development or packaged
applications, as well as single applications or many applications. When externally sourced,
application testing services may be purchased as staff augmentation, discrete project work and
longer-term outsourcing engagements.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: In the past three years, more attention and focus
have been placed on testing services. Several business factors have accelerated this focus:

Organizations increasingly recognize the business need to achieve a more predictable

and consistent software development process, including all levels of testing and QA.

The cost of software defects is better understood today than it has been historically
because organizations are getting better at baselining costs and performance/service
levels as part of a larger sourcing strategy.

Accelerated release cycles for business applications is a reality, with more applications
directly touching the customer and application availability directly tied to revenue
performance. The cost of software defects is more visible in many industries.

When organizations look for additional ways to cut costs, especially after already
outsourcing, testing and QA emerge as good candidate services.

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The rise in the use of external providers for application development especially Indian
offshore providers has raised awareness of the need for improved processes and
methodologies.

More service providers are aggressively marketing application testing services.

These factors have converged to accelerate the hype associated with application testing services.
On the demand side, organizations have great expectations when they decide to externally
source testing services but often have not considered the implications of doing so, or the way in
which they should structure the contract and relationship. IT decision makers generally do not
engage the right number and level of developers in the planning process, and keep business
users at the periphery. This leads to integration problems and conflicts among resources, made
more significant because an external source is assessing the quality of others' work products,
which often includes the products of other external sources.
On the supply side, the opportunity to leverage low-cost labor by using offshore resources in offhours (when compared to the client's work day) testing is especially appealing to pure-play
offshore providers. They have invested in expanding their testing services to offer them as standalone services to an existing client base. Niche providers also emerged in offshore locations as
testing specialists. When demand reached critical mass, traditional providers started to see the
opportunity and began to make investments to compete with the offshore providers. Thus, there
has been a rapid proliferation of providers that claim to have application testing expertise.
Providers will accept work, especially from an existing client, in virtually any way the client wants
to scope and pay for it. This opportunistic approach perpetuates an environment that lacks
standards for scope of work, service levels, price, contractual terms and other attributes that are
consistent with an immature and hyped service offering.
User Advice: If isolating testing functions makes sense as part of your sourcing strategy, then
ensure that you have a well-defined scope, clear performance requirements, measurable success
criteria and engagement with all the application and user groups that will be integral to the testing
process. As a discrete function, the organization must have the resources, methodology and
practices in place to provide output to the testing provider, and then receive input when the
function is completed. Many organizations can operate in this type of environment, while many
others prefer broader accountability, such as what exists at the application level.
When evaluating providers, ensure that you give proper weighting to the level of maturity,
automation and process standardization that the provider has achieved in testing services when
offered and delivered as stand-alone services. Consider providers with dedicated business units
for testing with consistent revenue growth for that business area. If the business unit is relatively
new, then require the provider to demonstrate its commitment to this market. Check references
carefully and match your specific requirements to similar engagements.
View testing as part of the application development life cycle, even if it is externally sourced as a
discrete function. Ensure alignment between the application development methodology and the
testing methodology. Build knowledge transfer into the outsourcing action plan. The selected
provider will need to learn your methodology, and you will need to learn its. Organizations that
want to leverage a provider's intellectual property must pay special attention to knowledge
transfer and training during the transition process.
Application testing services may be purchased in various ways, and organizations need to be
clear about their objectives and the value proposition of each option. Staff augmentation is used
to address resource constraints. Organizations are responsible for directing the resources and
ensuring the outcomes. Discrete project work is typically used in two scenarios: for a specific
application development effort that requires independent testing or as a consulting-led project to

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evaluate the efficacy of changing the way application testing is performed. These consulting-led
projects are often described as pilot programs and will often lead to long-term outsourcing
contracts. Finally, testing services purchased through an outsourcing contract signal the
organization's commitment to leverage the market's expertise and assign delivery responsibility to
an external source.
Organizations considering various sourcing options are likely to find an aggressive sales
approach to broaden the scope of application services beyond the organization's intent. In many
cases, a broader scope of work might provide benefits from leveraging the provider's process
maturity to build quality into the software as opposed to simply testing the quality of the software.
Although this is a worthwhile aspiration, organizations must ensure that they are prepared to
invest in broader quality programs before engaging in relationships of this nature.
Business Impact: The major business impacts of application testing services include:

Cost savings in the discrete application development life cycle and the longer-term

The ongoing cost of maintaining the application; decreased time to implement new
applications or functionality

Increased rigor and productivity by resources throughout the development process

Improved performance of applications once they're in production

Better and more-consistent quality control processes

Many organizations do not know how much they are spending on application testing and software
QA, nor do they understand the true cost of inadequate testing processes. Furthermore, most do
not have discretionary budgets to develop world-class testing services. The lack of testing and
QA standards and consistency often leads to business disruption, which can be costly. However,
most organizations do not use a process that links testing failures to business disruption on a cost
basis. Application testing is a case where the use of an external provider can be effective but
sometimes difficult to clearly demonstrate.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: One percent to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: AppLabs Technologies; Aztecsoft; Cognizant; EDS; Hexaware; IBM; Infogain;
Infosys Technologies; Keane; Satyam Computer Services; Tata Consultancy Services; Thinksoft;
Wipro Technologies

SOA Governance Technologies

Analysis By: Frank Kenney
Definition: The key to being successful with your SOA projects is to understand and control your
SOA artifacts. SOA artifacts can include services, SOA policies (that is, service-level
agreements), business processes and profiles of consumers and providers. The key to
understanding and controlling these artifacts is SOA governance. Various technologies can help
you control how your artifacts are being used, managed, secured and tested, as well as how
visible they are. These technologies include:
SOA policy management provides the technology to create, discover, reference and sometimes
enforce policies related to SOA artifacts, such as access control, performance and service levels.

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SOA registries and repositories help manage metadata related to SOA artifacts (for example,
services, policies, processes and profiles) and have recently evolved to include the creation and
documentation of the relationships (that is, configurations and dependencies) between various
metadata and artifacts.
SOA QA and validation technologies validate the individual SOA artifacts, and determine the
relationships to each other within the context of an SOA deployment. For example, these
technologies will test and validate a composite service that executes specific processes, while
having specific policies enforced on it.
Monitoring is present throughout the individual technical domains and enables companies to
study an SOA and its environment and provide deeper, real-time business intelligence and
analytics applications. It also helps them checking that the various governance processes are
actually followed. Business activity management (BAM; see "MarketScope for Business Activity
Monitoring Platforms, 3Q06") plays a key role in the evolution and agility of an SOA and is the
foundation for future complex event processing scenarios as the SOA life cycle (a cycle of
developing, testing, deploying, monitoring, analyzing and refining).
Adapters, interfaces, application program interfaces and interoperability standards enable all the
technical domains to communicate and share information, as well as enable the governance suite
to be integrated with existing infrastructure applications, such as business applications,
integration middleware or OSs for optimal policy definition and executions.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: SOA governance technologies, specifically the
service registry, and SOA policy enforcement (service management and service security) have
been hyped by vendors and end users; many end users are deploying these technologies without
credible SOA governance organizational processes and strategies. As a result, service registries
and policy enforcement tools are often underused today (only for cataloging and XML security).
With more vendors entering into OEM agreements and partnerships with best-of-breed vendors,
these technologies will reach the Peak of Inflated Expectations within 12 months. However,
because most SOA deployments will likely fail without proper governance, companies will
eventually move to better leverage SOA governance technologies to provide visibility,
manageability, monitoring security and QA.
User Advice: Regardless of the overhyping of SOA governance, companies deploying SOAs
need to first develop a strategy and process for SOA governance that encompass technologies
and organizations. Deploying a service registry for reuse and developing some policies around
the development of services is a good start, but companies should plan on using that registry for
SOA life cycle management and for visibility into various SOA artifacts.
Business Impact: Any company or division deploying an SOA will be impacted by SOA
governance. Entities providing software as a service, integration as a service, business-tobusiness services or hosting applications should take advantage of SOA governance
technologies to enhance their offerings, better manage their SOA artifacts and obtain competitive
differentiation.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Sample Vendors: Actional; AmberPoint; BEA; HP-Mercury; iTKO; IBM; Layer 7 Technologies;
LogicLibrary; Oracle; Reactivity; Software AG/webMethods; SOA Software; Tibco Software;
Vordel; WebLayers

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Globally Sourced Testing

Analysis By: Partha Iyengar; Thomas Murphy; Allie Young
Definition: Globally sourced (offshore) testing involves the delivery and support of applications
testing services such as functional, stress, regression and usability testing using a global
delivery model (GDM).
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Service vendors, primarily from among the leading
broad-based offshore providers, are increasingly focusing on application functional, stress,
regression and usability testing services using the GDM. These organizations offer a wide variety
of services, with a high degree of competence, emanating from the historical focus on process
and quality that they have made a differentiating factor of the offshore model. The added benefit
of cost-arbitrage-driven lower pricing to clients is also a compelling factor that has made this one
of the fastest-growing service lines in global sourcing.
The strong growth of this class of offerings has driven many of the large traditional service
providers, as well as some pure-play testing service providers, to increasingly focus and expand
on this service line. Some organizations are also building COE-style testing factories to move
toward increased levels of automation support for testing, as well as to help bring about the
paradigm of "building quality into the software," as opposed to "testing quality into the software."
The ability to effectively outsource testing services using an offshore labor model is challenged by
poorly written or understood specifications, as well as the problems that result from inexperience
with the GDM. Challenges in communicating effectively during the development process are
common for first-time users; however, the allure of offshore labor cost savings is driving interest
in these services, and offshore testing services engagements have been highly successful.
Many engagements will fail to meet expectations until collaborative environments improve and
expectations become realistic. A higher degree of focus and emphasis also needs to be on
"equalizing" the widely differing process capabilities and levels of the typical client enterprise and
its service providers. However, the path is well-trod by ISVs that provide models for successful
use.
Longtime users of offshore vendors for development have found their offshore testing efforts to
be extremely successful, because they've figured out the requirements for
process/communication issues. First-time users should start small typically with a pilot - and
then work toward larger-scale efforts. A growing number of firms also offer mixed models with onsite, "nearshore" and offshore options to create more-effective communication paths.
User Advice: Explore outsourced testing for applications in maintenance and to assist with
performance-testing upgrades to software packages. However, organizations must first have
models and/or documents that enable test planning, or use outside expertise to create them. The
obvious opportunity is to effectively set the stage to leverage the service providers testing
offerings by using their expertise to improve basic process levels in the internal testing
environment, models and artifacts of the enterprise. These models should be kept up-to-date
during the project, with an effective communication and versioning process. They will provide a
richer collaboration and communication medium with the service provider.
Business Impact: Offshore testing may reduce expenditures for testing and provide morethorough testing practices if the appropriate documentation and version management processes
are used. However, the long-term goal should be to move to a paradigm of building quality into
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the software, as opposed to testing quality in, as well as to move toward automated testing
process and environments.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Sample Vendors: AppLabs Technologies; Cognizant Technology Solutions; IBM Global
Technology Services; Infogain; ReadyTestGo; Tata Consultancy Services; Wipro Technologies

Model-Driven Architectures
Analysis By: David Norton; David Cearley; David McCoy
Definition: The term "Model Driven Architecture" is a registered trademark of the Object
Management Group (OMG). It describes OMG's proposed approach to separating business-level
functionality from the technical nuances of its implementation (see www.omg.org/mda). The
premise behind OMG's Model Driven Architecture and the broader family of model-driven
approaches (MDAs) is to enable business-level functionality to be modeled by standards, such as
Unified Modeling Language (UML) in OMG's case; allow the models to exist independently of
platform-induced constraints and requirements; and then instantiate those models into specific
runtime implementations, based on the target platform of choice.
"Model-driven," as in "model-driven software engineering," is a commonly (if sometimes
generically) used prefix that denotes concepts in which an initial model creation period precedes
and guides subsequent efforts, including model-driven application development, such as SODA;
model-driven engineering; and model-driven processes, such as BPM. "Model-driven" has
become a "catchall" phrase for an entire genre of approaches.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Core supporting standards, such as UML
(referenced by OMG's Model Driven Architecture) are well-established; however, comprehensive
MDAs as a whole are less mature than their constituent supporting standards in terms of vendor
support and actual deployment in the application architecture, construction and deployment cycle.
An MDA represents a long-standing goal of software construction that has seen prior incarnations
and waves of Hype Cycle positioning (for example, computer-aided software engineering
technology). The goal remains the same: Create a model of the new system, and then enable the
model to become transformed into the final system as a separate and significantly simplified step.
As always, such grand visions take time to catch on, and they face significant hurdles along the
way. A new wave of model-driven hype is emerging.
User Advice: Technical and enterprise architects should strongly consider the implications of
implementing architectural solutions that are not MDA-compliant. However, all major vendors will
provide adherence, to at least some degree, in their tools, coupled with best-practice extensions
beyond MDA standards. Organizations implementing SOAs should pay close attention to the
MDA standards and consider acquiring tools that automate models and rules. These include
architected rapid application development (ARAD) and architected model-driven (AMD)
technologies and rule engines supporting code-generating and non-code-generating (late
binding) implementations.
AMD is primarily suited to complex projects that require a high degree of reuse of business
services, where you can put significant time into business process analysis (BPA) and design. At
the same time, no competent organization would want to do AMD-only development, because the
additional time and cost of the analysis and design steps would not bring adequate return on

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investment or agility for time- and/or budget-constrained application development projects. The
ideal solution is to mix AMD, ARAD and rapid application development (RAD) methods and tools.
Business Impact: MDAs reinforce the focus on business first and technology second. The
concepts focus attention on modeling the business: business rules, business roles, business
interactions and so on. The instantiation of these business models in specific software
applications or components flows from the business model. By reinforcing the business-level
focus and coupling MDAs with SOA concepts, you end up with a system that is inherently more
flexible and adaptable. If OMG's Model Driven Architecture or the myriad related MDAs gain
widespread acceptance, then the impact on software architecture will be substantial. All vertical
domains would benefit from the paradigm.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: One percent to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: BEA Systems; Borland; Compuware; IBM; Kabira; OMG; Pegasystems;
Telelogic; Unisys

Scriptless Testing
Analysis By: Thomas Murphy
Definition: Scriptless-testing tools are second-generation testing tools that reduce the amount of
manual scripting needed to create tests using data-driven approaches. The goal is to keep the
test project from becoming another development project, and to enable business user testing.
These tools have a broad set of pre-defined objects that can interact with the application being
tested, including error handling and data management. As the tools mature, they'll continue to
shift toward a more MDA.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Although these tools reduce the amount of code to
be written, they don't remove the need for skilled testers. Scriptless testing makes it easier for
business analysts to be involved in testing efforts, but the analysts must still be paired with quality
engineers to drive testing effectiveness. This is especially important with packaged applications.
The emergence and changing nature of SOA and the tools supporting it will extend the time
needed for this market to mature, and additional areas (such as data management) will suppress
the expected results. Tools and users will reach the Slope of Enlightenment during the next two
years and take another three to five years to reach the Plateau of Productivity.
The promise of being "script-free" has existed for several years; however, although improvements
have been made, it's unlikely that all scripts can be removed for all applications. Expect the
greatest benefits to come from domain-limited tools. Tools will also gain capabilities as modeloriented approaches appear, but these will require skills and model management to be effective.
User Advice: Evaluate tools that reduce the cost of testing. In addition, recognize that these tools
aren't meaningfully well-integrated with leading application life cycle management suites, which
reduces a team's ability to coordinate effectively. Although these tools will reduce the need for
scripting, well-designed tests still require skill and business users typically don't have the right
skills and mind-set for this.
Business Impact: Scripting-centric tools are labor-intensive not only for the initial creation, but
also for maintenance. Scriptless testing will reduce overall testing costs and enable better
coverage, which should lead to improved defect detection earlier in the development cycle (thus

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further reducing overall application costs). However, expectations should be managed.

Organizations still need qualified testers, and tools continue to have limitations.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: Agitar Software; HP; Original Software; Worksoft

Architected, Model-Driven SODA

Analysis By: David Norton
Definition: AMD project approaches to SODA are appropriate for applications, services and
components that require robust analysis to understand business rules and requirements, and to
automate their design and delivery for maximum reuse and performance.
Model-driven can also be subdivided into a transformation approach where 100% code
generation is the norm or the models are executable. The second approach is elaboration, with
pattern and frameworks being used to partially generate implementation.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Business process automation, UML
methodologies and best practices are still evolving. They must capture service-oriented business
models and rules at a sufficient level of detail for integrated tools to automate or facilitate the
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and C# components based on them. The more-widely used ARAD
tools are increasingly adding integrated UML and business process modeling capabilities, and
bidirectional bridges to leading modeling tools evolving their technologies beyond ARAD into
AMD. Moreover, as users of traditional client/server integrated model-driven development tools
migrate their application portfolios to new SOAs, they are expected to replace them with the nextgeneration of SODA AMD tools.
User Advice: Organizations that use traditional client/server integrated model-driven
development tools should consider using a next-generation AMD tool in conjunction with
developing new or replacement SOA applications. Organizations that have no experience with
integrated model-driven technologies are advised to evolve to AMD approaches as they extend
the use of their ARAD tools into more model-driven SODA projects. Other organizations that have
committed to top-down enterprise or business architecture modeling efforts should strongly
consider adding an AMD tool to leverage their models through code or rule automation to improve
productivity, quality and compliance. Mature AMD organizations developing applications for
legacy third-generation language and fourth-generation language (4GL) need to assess migration
to new AMD tools carefully. The newer tools support a more-bidirectional model-code, elaboration
approach compared with the old 100% transformation method that some older tools use.
Warning: Model-driven development requires a level of sophistication beyond the capability of
most developers. Therefore, be selective in the applications you choose to implement and with
whom you staff the effort. The time to improve AMD is more than two years. Consider this for
long-term but major improvement.
Business Impact: Design tools, coupled with code-rule generators, are used to ensure
compliance with business and technical models and architectures, while providing productivity
and quality improvements. Coupled with service-oriented and component-based methodology
focused on reuse, and an established base of reusable business and technical artifacts, factor
productivity gains of 10 times or more across the development life cycle are common but this
generally takes three or more years to achieve. Moreover, AMD approaches are appropriate only

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for a subsection of the application portfolio, so they should be coupled with ARAD and other rapid
development tools as part of an application development tool suite.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: One percent to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: CA; Compuware; IBM; Mia-Software; Oracle; Telelogic; Wyde

Enterprise Architecture Tools

Analysis By: Greta James
Definition: Enterprise architects need to bring together information on a variety of subjects,
including business processes, organization structures, applications, data (structured and
unstructured), technology of various kinds and interfaces. Architects need to understand and
represent the relationships between this information and communicate it to their stakeholders. EA
tools address this need by storing information in a repository and providing capabilities to
structure, analyze and present the information in a variety of ways.
An EA tool should also have a metamodel that supports the business, information and technology
viewpoints, as well as the solution architecture. The repository should support relationship
integrity among and between objects in these viewpoints/architectures. It should also have the
ability to create or import models and artifacts and to extract repository information to support
stakeholder needs, including extracts in graphical, text and executable forms.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Most tools have come from a modeling or a
metadata repository origin, with the modeling-heritage tools having better visualization
capabilities, and the repository-heritage tools generally having better import/export and
management capabilities. As the market has matured, vendors have rounded out their
capabilities. Small, private companies, several of which are European, predominate in this
market. While there were two mergers/acquisitions in 2005, more activity of this kind is
anticipated. We expect large technology vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle to enter this
market, most likely through acquisition. Although all vendors have sales offices in North America
and Europe, only four companies ASG, IDS Scheer, Sybase and Telelogic have an
extensive direct presence elsewhere. This is unlikely to change in the short term without
additional acquisition activity.
This market has gradually matured over the past year, with vendors continuing, by and large, to
enjoy healthy license revenue growth. Vendors have also continued to add features to their
products, such as improving their ability to import information about packaged applications and to
analyze information in or derived from their repositories. Vendor support for developing Web sites
that make their repository information available and understandable to a range of stakeholders
has increased in power and become more widespread.
User Advice: When choosing an EA tool, consider five broad functional capabilities: the ability to
flexibly structure information in a repository in meaningful ways; the ability of the tool to exchange
information with other related tools, possibly supplemented by the ability to generate models and
other artifacts within the tool; the ability to analyze the information in the repository; the ability to
communicate information to address the needs of EA stakeholders; and the ability to administer
and manage information in the repository.
As well as the tool functions, consider other factors such as the viability of the vendor; the
availability and capability of the vendor's sales and support organization; the vendor's experience

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in your industry and any related tool capabilities, such as support for an industry-specific
architecture framework; and the vendor's understanding of EA.
Business Impact: Business strategists, planners and analysts can derive considerable benefit
from an EA tool, because it helps them to better understand the complex system of IT resources
and its support of the business. Crucially, this visibility helps to better align IT with the business
strategy, as well as providing other benefits, such as improved disaster recovery planning.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Sample Vendors: ASG; Casewise; IDS Scheer; Mega International; Proforma; Sybase;
Telelogic; Troux Technologies
Recommended Reading: "Telelogic's System Architect for Enterprise Architecture"
"Follow These Best Practices to Optimize Architecture Tool Benefits"
"Troux: Innovative Enterprise Architecture Tools"
"Cool Vendors in Enterprise Architecture, 2007"

Application Security Testing

Analysis By: Joseph Feiman; Neil MacDonald
Definition: Application security testing is the detection of applications' conditions that are
indicative of exploitable vulnerabilities.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Two technology markets for application security
testing have been evolving rapidly static application security testing (SAST) and dynamic
application security testing (DAST). SAST is a source code and binary code testing technology
market. Its technologies are applicable at the construction and testing phases of the application
life cycle. DAST is a dynamic, black-box application testing (the source code is unavailable to
DAST tools) technology market. DAST technologies are applicable at the testing and operation
phases of the application life cycle.
The adoption of SAST and DAST application security testing is impeded, owing to a lack of
application security competence and resources in application development organizations. The
solution to this problem is coming in the form of emerging security-as-a-service offerings from
technology and service providers, when providers test applications (often remotely) and provide
application development organizations with vulnerability reports and security breach remedies.
The speed of adoption for application security testing is accelerating because of a pressing need
to resolve the collision of two trends: the growing exposure of e-business applications on the Web
and the relentless attacks on these applications. The plateau of technology productivity will be
reached in two to five years.
User Advice: Enterprises must adopt application-testing technologies and processes, because
the need is strategic. Yet, they should use a tactical approach to vendor selection, because of the
immaturity of this emerging market. Application development organizations should accept that
they, not network security specialists, are responsible for the adoption of application security
discipline.

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Business Impact: Enterprises adopting application security testing technologies and processes
will benefit from risk and cost reductions, because these technologies and processes provide
early detection and correction of vulnerabilities before applications move into production and
become open to attack.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Sample Vendors: Acunetix; Cenzic; Coverity; Fortify Software; Klocwork; Ounce Labs; SPI
Dynamics; Veracode; Watchfire
Recommended Reading: "MarketScope for Web Application Security Vulnerability Scanners,
2006"
Market Definition and Vendor Selection Criteria for Source Code Security Testing Tools

Sliding Into the Trough

Project and Portfolio Management
Analysis By: Daniel Stang
Definition: Project and portfolio management (PPM) systems support the business process of
effective allocation of capital to projects. They also track and monitor the use of time, people and
money to deliver different types of "work." In IT organizations, work can include strategic and
nonstrategic IT and non-IT projects, new and existing applications, and new and existing IT
services made up of software services and technology, application change or enhancement
requests, bug and error fixes, routine maintenance procedures, and help desk and trouble tickets.
By tracking work demand and execution against the resources (time, people and money) used to
complete the work, PPM systems provide visibility into work performance and allow for moreeffective planning, decision making and management of strategic and operational work delivered
by IT departments.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: PPM is first and foremost about changing work
execution behaviors. The most robust PPM systems are sophisticated enough to manage time
reporting through top-down portfolio analysis, optimization and planning, and can manage various
types of work items from simple IT service requests to multiyear, formally defined projects and
programs. Organizations interested in these PPM systems, however, are not in a position to
support all potential processes suggested by these systems, and, therefore, cannot realize all the
benefits without undergoing significant change management.
PPM systems have been available for years and have grown in maturity, but the intended
audience is PPM process immature. The acquisition of PPM technology is steady, but
implementation times can be slowed considerably owing to PPM process immaturity and/or lack
of management buy-in. Midmarket solutions are emerging in response to the resonance of the
PPM value proposition with smaller IT organizations (fewer than 100 resources in the IT
organization), and alternative deployment models are appearing in the marketplace. In addition,
PPM systems are tracking more than just projects, and we expect PPM systems to continue
expansion from the project portfolio level to support, track and monitor work from IT service
management and application life cycle management portions of the IT function. It will be another
two or three years before end users and PPM systems reach the Slope of Enlightenment and
another two to three years before they reach the Plateau of Productivity.

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User Advice:

IT project organizations should pursue a PPM initiative that includes three parts:

Organizational and process definition and adoption

PPM process automation via technology

Parallel program management office creation or improvement initiative

The PPM system evaluation is an important part of a PPM initiative, but it is not the only part, and
the change management required for a successful PPM initiative should not be ignored. PPM
systems are not "off the shelf" systems. Initial implementations should be controlled and narrow,
reflecting the commonly low PPM process maturity levels among IT departments.
Business Impact: Visibility into work demand, committed work and resources (time, people and
money) used and available is the first step toward cost savings and a more-effective response to
rapid business change in IT departments. PPM systems help organizations lower investment risk,
reduce operational costs, increase work execution efficiency and quality, and more effectively
align IT output with business strategy.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: One percent to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: CA; Compuware; HP; IBM; Planview; Primavera Systems

Business Application Package Testing

Analysis By: Thomas Murphy
Definition: These are testing tools to test the functionality and performance of packaged
applications, such as SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft. The products generally provide pre-built
routines for package functions to reduce the time needed to effectively test, and they may also
provide data model support or integration with package vendor tools. Software packages provide
unique challenges for custom development, and these tools offer specific support for specific
packages.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Most of the core technology is robust, but users
are generally disappointed with the manual scripting and maintenance costs of the tools, which
can often exceed the package implementation costs. The broadest uses are for performance
testing and to help ensure that upgrades don't create regression. A growing number of vendors
and services take advantage of better integration with the package, creating much faster return
on testing efforts and reducing test maintenance costs. During the next three years, we expect
that the majority of users of Oracle and SAP application stacks will go through major upgrades,
and these will place a strain on testing resources. Companies that lack effective testing strategies
and technologies will ultimately experience higher implementation costs and rollout delays. These
will drive increased adoption of tools, but the initial costs will surprise many organizations that
look at a package as already tested.
User Advice: The cost to test package software can often exceed implementation costs, slowing
deployments and maintenance updates significantly. This constrains the agility of the business.
Purpose-specific testing tools should be used for any package deployment with complex
integrations or process customization. Organizations should seek to build automation for key
scenarios to prevent regressions during maintenance and to ensure that geography-specific rules
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2007 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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are accurate. The amount and type of testing that an organization will require is driven by the
complexity of the implementation: multiple geographies, workflow customization, integration with
other applications and regulatory compliance.
Business Impact: Performance tuning can save considerable amounts on deployment hardware
(as much as 50%). Effective functional testing early in development will reduce the cost of repairs
and rollout failures. Building automation tests for key workflows will enable faster rollout of
maintenance releases and add-on functionality while reducing the risk of application failure.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: Arsin; Gamma Technologies; HP; Newmerix; SAP; Sucid; Worksoft

Agile Development Methodology

Analysis By: Matt Light; James Duggan
Definition: Agile development methodology is a highly accelerated, iterative development
process with frequent monthly, weekly and even daily deliverables of priority requirements as
captured in user stories, often documented in test cases prior to coding.
The principles of collaboration, re-factoring and promoting ownership are key differentiators. Agile
methods prefer to define themselves in terms of "values, principles and best practices," rather
than "process and procedure." Agile methods attempt to establish a high level of collaboration
among developers and business users. They also attempt to flatten the project and organizational
structure, often through self-organizing teams. They embrace the notion that requirements
change, unexpected requirements appear, priorities shift and that development practices must
enable quick, accurate adaptation to those changes.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: All but the most aggressive adopters, Type B and
C, development organizations are encountering difficulty adopting agility judiciously and
effectively. A high level of suspicion and resistance to agile methods exists from development
management in large organizations. Project management and quality functions frequently find it
difficult to redefine their functions in an agile context. There are also significant barriers to agile
development when multisourcing. The popularity of other iterative approaches, including moretraditional RAD, also influence the expected pace of adoption in organizations trying agile
approaches. Through 2008, 90% of agile development efforts will be confined to departmental or
workgroup product development (0.7 probability).
Many organizations doubt agile methods' effectiveness because of the perception that agile
methods have no structure. Unlike "cowboy coding," agile approaches actually have, in many
ways, closer control (daily control) of development activities and offer clear practices, while
shunning some of the traditional formalism (for example, big documents) that have traditionally
provided comfort, but have not resulted in improved execution. Agile techniques are gradually
transforming more-traditional RAD approaches, such as Rational Unified Process (which is
incorporated in the official IBM incarnation of many of the techniques and practices of agility).
Many of the practices more consistent unit testing, daily builds, scrum meetings, being usecase-driven have been put in place in successful application development organizations. Too
often, less-disciplined developers have honored such practices more in the breach. Only true
adoption of the spirit of agility, and consistent use of its practices, will lead to broader and moresuccessful use.

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User Advice: Adopt agile approaches judiciously, on internal projects with sophisticated teams
that are not averse to process discipline. "Coding cowboys" are not the developers who will
capture lessons learned from agile development projects and help build agile capability in the
organization. Agile projects need smart, disciplined developers that understand patterns. Agile
proponents state that they value working software "over" process and documentation, whereas
less-sophisticated developers value it to the exclusion, or "instead of," process. A key driver of
agility is the increasing number of tools that enable agile practices and provide the "comfort" that
a bigger process will provide. Comfort is coming from real information and real data, not just a
big, static document. Examples are code review tools, unit testing tools, continuous integration
tools, metrics tools and project management tools that help automate and drive information into
repositories to support management views of project status.
Business Impact: In some Type A development organizations, agile approaches on some
projects are already delivering the benefits of fast, accurate delivery of priority application
requirements. Although rarely the dominant approach, even the lessons that aggressive adopters
(Type A) learned from agile development have a positive impact on other methodological
approaches in the development organization. Tight business collaboration (on-site customer) is a
key success factor with agility, but it's also the most broken principle ("You can have my domain
expert for three weeks, no more"). The successful adoption of agility will require more business
involvement in the development process than most organizations have committed or experienced
in older methods.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: One percent to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: Borland; IBM; Jaczone AB; Rally Software Development; Thought Equity
Motion; ThoughtWorks; VersionOne
Recommended Reading: "Borland Runs With the Continuous Integration Gauntlet"
"Pairing Agility with Quality: Gartner's 10 Principles of NeoRAD"
"Agile Requirements Definition and Management Will Benefit Application Development"
"Agile Development: Fact or Fiction"

Unit Testing
Analysis By: Thomas Murphy
Definition: Unit-testing tools are designed to test application functionality at the "unit" of
modularity. In object-oriented programming, this is generally at the class level; in SOA, it is a
service. Unit testing is advocated in agile development methods and is put to use by some
organizations as part of test-driven development. These tools provide frameworks for
automatically generating unit tests, managing and running suites of tests, and reporting results.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Tools in this space began in the open-source
market more than five years ago and are commonly used. Environments now provide support for
unit tests as part of check-in criteria and have the capability to discover needed tests and
boundary conditions. In addition, tools are appearing on top of basic unit testing frameworks to
support the creation of user interface functional tests. Driving testing early into the life cycle and
running the test fixtures frequently can result in dramatic quality improvements and greatly
reduced costs by detecting defects early.

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Although unit testing is relatively well-known and adoption of the core frameworks is mainstream,
the use of unit testing is expanding as new solutions are layered on top of current frameworks,
pushing unit testing to do more for example, functional testing. In addition, tools that automate
the generation of unit tests promise big results but suffer in performance. Because most
organizations use a test-second rather than test-driven approach, they do not gain all the
promised benefits of unit testing.
User Advice: Drive the use of unit testing in your organization, and train developers on the
effective use of these tools to help in design discovery and refactoring. Use these tools to ensure
that application code presents contract-oriented interfaces, which will enable smoother transitions
toward SOAs. Although open source is cost-efficient, automation provided in integrated
development environments and by commercial products improves and reduces the amount of
code that must be created.
Business Impact: Unit testing can reduce the amount of time needed to functionally test an
application, and can also provide a solid baseline for functional and load testing. The appropriate
use of the technology can drive out defects earlier in the development process, thus reducing the
cost to fix defects.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: Twenty percent to 50% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: Agitar Software; Eclipse; Instantiations; Microsoft; Open Source Applications
Foundation; Parasoft; United Binary

ARAD SODA
Analysis By: David Norton; Mark Driver
Definition: Architectural and design patterns are modified by an organization's technical
architects to adhere to the company's architectural standards. All code involving the architecture
is generated in applications in a compliant manner as part of the ARAD process for SODA.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Architectural standards continue to evolve.
Technologies that can use these standards to generate Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition
(J2EE) and .NET code are moving toward mainstream use. As mainstream users of RAD tools
experience the steep learning curves and lost productivity associated with building more-complex
service-oriented applications, they will look to ARAD tools for relief.
User Advice: To reduce the learning curve and increase the productivity of J2EE or .NET
developers, or to ease the transition of traditional client/server developers using COBOL, C or
4GLs, enterprises should consider providing these developers with ARAD methods and tools.
Business Impact: Design tools, coupled with code generators, are used to ensure compliance
with business and technical models and architectures, while providing productivity and quality
improvements. Gartner studies indicate that productivity gains using ARAD methods and tools
are typically 30% to 40% compared with traditional client/server methods and tools. Application
and development managers should look for a return within 12 months of ARAD implementation.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent

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Sample Vendors: CA; Codagen Technologies; Compuware; IBM; Interactive Objects; MiaSoftware; Microsoft; ObjectVenture; Wyde

SOA
Analysis By: Roy Schulte; Yefim Natis
Definition: SOA is a style of application architecture. An application is an SOA application if it is
modular; the modules are distributable; software developers have written or generated interface
metadata that specifies an explicit contract so that another developer can find and use the
service; the interface is separate from the implementation (code and data) of the service provider;
and the services are shareable that is, designed and deployed in a manner that enables them
to be invoked successively by disparate consumers. Unlike some other types of distributed
computing, services in SOA can be shared across applications running on disparate platforms
and are inherently easier to integrate with software from other development teams.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The use of SOA is accelerating in response to
escalating business requirements, the emergence of Web and Web services standards (such as
WSDL and SOAP) and the improving availability of SOA-capable development tools and
applications. Competition, globalization and technology advances are driving companies to
change their products, business processes and prices more frequently than they did before the
mid-1990s. The growing use of BPM and BAM is also causing companies to use more SOA
because BPM and BAM are more-effective and easier to develop when using SOA. Vendors of
middleware, development tools and packaged applications have committed to moving to SOA,
and their product lines are well into the transition. User companies are moving more slowly, on
average, and they are experiencing varying degrees of difficulty in ramping up their use of SOA.
These difficulties hinder, but will not prevent, the spread of SOA throughout the application
portfolios of large companies. The growing, if limited, practical experience with SOA has
demonstrated the real costs and benefits of the transition to SOA. SOA skepticism is gradually
giving way to a realistic anticipation of costs and benefits. Development and management best
practices for SOA are still not fully mature, but companies are largely satisfied with their
experience with it.
User Advice: Use SOA when designing new business applications, particularly those whose life
spans are expected to be more than three years and that will undergo continuous refinement,
maintenance or enlargement. SOA is well-suited especially for building composite applications.
When buying packaged applications, rate those that implement SOA more highly than those that
do not. Also, use SOA in application integration scenarios that involve composite applications that
tie new logic to purchased packages, legacy applications or services offered by other business
units. However, do not discard non-SOA applications in favor of SOA applications just on the
basis of architecture. Discard non-SOA applications only if there are compelling business reasons
why the non-SOA application has become unsatisfactory. Continue to use non-SOA architecture
styles for some new, tactical applications of limited size and complexity, and for minor changes to
installed non-SOA applications. Recognize that there are multiple patterns within SOA (such as
multichannel applications, composite applications, multistep process flows and event-driven
SOA), and each of these has its own best practices for design, deployment and management.
Business Impact: SOA is a durable change in application architecture, like the relational data
model and the graphical user interface. The main benefit of SOA is that it reduces the effort and
time needed to change application systems to support changes in the business. The
implementation of the first SOA application in a business domain will generally be as difficult as,
or more difficult than, building the same application using non-SOA designs. However,
subsequent applications and changes to the initial SOA application are easier, faster and less
expensive because they leverage the SOA infrastructure and previously built services. SOA is an

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essential ingredient in strategies that seek to enhance the agility of a company. SOA also
reduces the cost of application integration, especially after enough applications have been
converted or modernized to support an SOA model.
Benefit Rating: Transformational
Market Penetration: Twenty percent to 50% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Recommended Reading: "Five Principles of SOA in Business and IT"
"SOA: Where Do I Start?"
"Applied SOA: Transforming Fundamental Principles Into Best Practices"

Climbing the Slope

Enterprise Software Change and Configuration Management
Analysis By: James Duggan
Definition: Enterprise software change and configuration management is an integrated business
process for software change and configuration management, evolving to encompass a full range
of change processes and governance. The functionalist supports the deployment of extended life
cycle management processes, which extend and integrate with requirements elicitation and
tracing tools, test planning and project portfolio tools. Bridges to production release and
distribution processes are being improved. Organizations are seeking the key enablers of
analysis and control regarding how development changes affect production. In addition,
organizations are moving to standard solutions across teams and locations to improve control,
reduce training costs, and improve the capability to support multisourcing and other
geographically distributed development strategies.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Smaller vendors are completing offerings, but lack
of user readiness will slow the implementation of integrated business processes.
User Advice: Changes come in steps in this technology, and are driven by changes in sourcing
and delivery. Identify the software delivery processes (used for the governance and management
of version, configuration and change) that will have to be upgraded. Create policies and
schedules that will encourage incremental adoption as increased maturity is required.
Business Impact: Explicit processes reduce cost and risk, and enhance agility in response to
business needs. Sarbanes-Oxley and similar initiatives have caused IT auditing standards to be
raised, thus demanding a chain of evidence.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Sample Vendors: CA; IBM; MKS; Serena; Telelogic

Enterprise Portals
Analysis By: David Gootzit

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Definition: A portal is Web software infrastructure that provides access to and interaction with
relevant information assets (such as information/content, applications and business processes),
knowledge assets and human assets by select targeted audiences, delivered in a highly
personalized manner. Enterprise portals may face different audiences, including employees
(business-to-employee B2E), customers (business-to-consumer) or business partners
(business-to-business). B2E portals are the most relevant type of enterprise portal to the highperformance workplace, but portals serving other audiences also play important roles.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Portals continue to be one of the most highly
sought interfaces across Fortune 2000 enterprises. They're fundamental technical components of
the high-performance workplace, whether as a replacement for a first-generation intranet, the
cornerstone of knowledge management initiatives, or a B2E portal that serves as the primary way
for employees to access and interact with back-end systems and repositories.
User Advice: Enterprise portal use has reached mainstream enterprises. B2E portal
deployments are no longer limited to early adopters and technologically aggressive enterprises.
Organizations are evaluating horizontal portal technology to augment their customer and partnerfacing Web presences. The personalized delivery of and interaction with relevant applications,
content and business processes can yield many benefits at the enterprise level, primarily focused
on reducing process cycle times and improving the quality of process execution.
Many enterprises that have deployed portals find themselves facing multiple, siloed deployments
using different portal frameworks. These enterprises should investigate appropriate portal
containment and rationalization policies. Enterprise portals are incorporating RIA technologies,
primarily in the form of Ajax, to improve the quality of the user experience they deliver.
Business Impact: The benefits of enterprise portals include controlling the "infoflood," providing
single sign-on, enhancing customer support and enabling tighter alignment with partners. The
benefits of internally facing portals include cost avoidance via employee self-service, but the most
compelling business impact can be improved business agility, velocity and throughput. Externally
facing portals can lead to increased revenue and profitability. Enterprise portals' biggest business
impact is in reducing cycle times and improving the quality of process execution.
Benefit Rating: Transformational
Market Penetration: Twenty percent to 50% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: BEA Systems; BroadVision; Fujitsu; IBM; Microsoft; Oracle; SAP; Sun; Tibco
Software; Vignette
Recommended Reading: "Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products, 2006"
"Hype Cycle for Portal Ecosystems, 2006"

Microsoft .NET Application Platform

Analysis By: Yefim Natis; Mark Driver
Definition: Microsoft does not identify a product that is an application server. However, its
Microsoft Windows offering contains all the functional elements of an enterprise application server
(EAS). Despite the lack of a named EAS product, Microsoft clearly (and effectively) competes
against the leading EAS vendors. We refer to the subset of Microsoft Windows, with the other
Microsoft offerings that amount to an EAS and a larger application platform suite, as the Microsoft
Application Platform (MSAP). Today, MSAP is based on the .NET architecture. MSAP includes

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the .NET framework (which includes ASP.NET), Internet Information Server, enterprise services
(such as Component Object Model +), Microsoft Message Queuing, BizTalk Server, Office
SharePoint and more. The release of Windows Server 2008 (formerly known as Longhorn) will
likely make some changes and additions to this list, including, most notably, Windows
Communications Foundation. It is already clear that the .NET Framework v.3 adds significant
enrichment to the previous versions of MSAP in the areas of productivity, support of SOA,
innovations in support of modern user experience and multiprotocol integration.
MSAP competes against Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and other enterprise
platform architectures in the high-end enterprise projects. MSAP also competes against PHP
platform, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion and open-source Java frameworks, such as Spring and
Struts, in lower-end productivity-oriented enterprise projects.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The technical quality and quality of service of .NET
are suitable for the majority of enterprise projects. However, Microsoft's business strategy for
mission-critical projects, including support, account management, long-term continuity in the
relationship and its software offerings, lags behind leading enterprise vendors' strategies.
Microsoft does not have a good reputation of seeing its customers through long-term software
architecture endeavors. Its exclusive commitment to Windows as the only OS platform reduces
the appeal of MSAP in large-scale enterprise settings. The impending replacement of Windows
Server 2003 in the 2008 time frame and its anticipated fundamental platform changes continue to
remind high-end enterprise platform users that MSAP has not yet reached dependable maturity
levels, despite its increasing technical strengths.
However, in lower-end enterprise settings, where MSAP dominates with its productivity, ubiquity
of skills and relatively low cost, MSAP remains a strong and growing option for the majority of
projects. Yet, MSAP's market share has not been increasing dramatically lately because of the
growing number of Java and other high-productivity alternatives, including open source.
MSAP is a technically strong platform option. It is used widely for small and midsize software
projects and, on occasion, for very large enterprise projects. Because of business strategy
shortcomings, MSAP is not considered for high-end projects as much as it could technically
handle. MSAP's market share is stable and will likely remain at present levels until the next
generation of MSAP is available (and proven) with the release of Windows Server 2008 and until
Microsoft's business strategy in high-end enterprise settings better reflects the requirements of
that environment.
User Advice: If you choose to use MSAP, then you have to use the Windows OS platform. If that
is acceptable, then consider MSAP for small and midsize software projects without limitations.
For large-scale projects, recognize that the technical quality of the MSAP technology is likely
sufficient for the requirements of the project. However, to achieve the "whole product" experience,
you will need to rely on third-party system integrators.
Microsoft excels at providing strong developer productivity at the cost of long-term flexibility.
Consider MSAP as one element in a larger IT strategy (for example, that might include Java EE)
or as the principle strategic platform when a Microsoft-centric strategy is acceptable or preferable.
Business Impact: MSAP frees IT organizations from the lock-in into a single programming
language (such as Java or PHP), but it locks the project into Windows OS and only the hardware
options that are available for Windows. MSAP can be a lower-cost option for enterprise platform
technologies. However, in larger settings, this assumption is not always true and must be verified
with real numbers. The history of significant discontinuities as Microsoft releases major new
versions of its MSAP technologies have also increased costs of long-term use of MSAP. Above
all, however, users who are happy to use Windows infrastructure for all their development needs

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find MSAP and its development environment easy to learn, easy to use and easy to staff major
factors reducing the costs and improving the time-to-market of software projects.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: More than 50% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: Microsoft
Recommended Reading: "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers, 2Q06"

OOA&D Methodologies
Analysis By: Michael Blechar; David Norton
Definition: Object-oriented analysis and design (OOA&D) methodologies are used by IT
professionals to convert business processes and requirements into software solutions in the form
of objects, components and services.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Virtually every major software vendor is advising
its customers to move to OOA&D methods, in conjunction with moving to service-oriented
development targeting J2EE and .NET platforms. Most organizations are adhering to this advice
by converting to OOA&D methods and tools to document requirements and perform logical
design as a front end to Java and C# code construction. The UML, owned by the OMG
consortium, is the de facto standard for OOA&D.
Domain-Specific Language (DSL) methods are emerging as a natural extension of and
complement to UML. DSL is helping to remove the semantic gap between problem and solution
domains by using tailor-made syntax and semantics. However, DSL-based modeling is largely
seen as a Microsoft initiative part of its Software Factories approach. This has split the
modeling community, and as a result, a period of instability will delay the broad adoption of DSL.
Microsoft believes you shouldn't bother with UML for automated model-based development, but
instead use purpose-built DSL right from the start. Microsoft argues that UML should be used for
documentation and DSL should be used for development.
User Advice: Implement OOA&D methods and tools in conjunction with the development of
service-oriented applications. As a best practice, use BPA/modeling methods and tools at a
conceptual/planning and analysis level to define business processes, workflows and events; then
bridge those models to OOA&D tools to continue IT modeling for the processes to be
implemented in software solutions.
DSLs should be considered as a complementary extension to UML. Most organizations will find
that they need both techniques to tackle the range and complexity of projects, and to balance
modeling return on investment against productivity and quality.
Business Impact: Improved specification languages close the gap among business
requirements, designs and executables.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: Twenty percent to 50% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream

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Page 36 of 47

Sample Vendors: Borland; Embarcadero Technologies; IBM; Microsoft; Sparx Systems; Sybase;
Telelogic

Linux as a Mission-Critical DBMS Platform

Analysis By: Donald Feinberg
Definition: The Linux OS environment can be used as a platform for DBMS deployments. This
includes all the necessary infrastructure involved with managing and supporting the Linux
environment in conjunction with a DBMS to support all types of applications, from simple to
complex, as well as providing high availability, disaster recovery and clustered environments.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Again, during the past year, we saw an increase in
the adoption rate of Linux as a DBMS platform, primarily because of the increase in support from
hardware and management tool vendors, the increasing maturity and manageability of the DBMS
engines, and the increase in expertise levels of IT staff with Linux. In addition, there has been a
marked increase in the adoption of Oracle RAC on Linux, and Teradata released a Linux Version
as well. All the DBMS vendors with Linux versions are showing increases in Linux revenue (see
"Market Share: Relational Database Management Systems by Operating System, Worldwide,
2006"). The speed of adoption will continue to increase as skill levels increase, management
tools mature and risk levels drop.
User Advice: Unless your enterprise is a "Microsoft Windows only" environment, you must begin
using Linux as a choice for DBMS deployment for simple noncritical applications. This will
increase your skills and knowledge base with Linux and DBMSs. Therefore, as the risk level
drops, you will be able to use Linux as a regular platform choice. You do not want to change to
Linux, and change your DBMS version and hardware all at the same time.
If you are using Linux today, then expand its use to take advantage of commodity hardware and
its associated cost savings. Using it in mission-critical and highly available environments is
acceptable if you have the proper Linux resources.
If your enterprise is risk-averse and interested in new features as an early adopter, then Linux is a
necessity. Use care in choosing the Linux hardware and software environment. Many options are
available from small vendors that may have cost savings tied to greater risk, and they carry the
added risk of not being certified by the DBMS vendors.
If your organization is risk-averse, then choose hardware and software options from larger
vendors with proven configurations on Linux, such as Dell, HP and IBM, and be sure your total
configuration is certified by your DBMS vendor.
Business Impact: The No. 1 advantage to Linux as a DBMS platform is the promise of lower
total cost of ownership. In enterprises starting out with Linux, these cost savings may be hidden
for the first several years as resources become trained and competent in Linux, and upfront
purchases of management tools are made. Most organizations report cost advantages after
attaining these skills and tools. There is also a greater level of flexibility with a Linux platform
because of the number of different hardware choices available. Finally, larger and moreaffordable configurations can be achieved with commodity blades and clustered build-out
technology of many nodes, each with fewer CPUs than the maximum in a symmetric
multiprocessing environment. Oracle RAC is being implemented in this environment with
success.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience

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Maturity: Early mainstream

Sample Vendors: IBM; MySQL; Oracle; Sybase; Teradata
Recommended Reading: "Market Share: Relational Database Management Systems by
Operating System, Worldwide, 2006"

Performance Testing
Analysis By: Thomas Murphy
Definition: Performance testing tools are used to simulate production loads to ensure that the
system being tested will perform adequately. This includes stress testing to ensure application
stability in adverse conditions. Leading tools are integrated into test management solutions and
support data retrieval from a wide variety of sources. Although the concept and tools are
generally mature, the shift toward Web 2.0 and SOA will continue to create challenges during the
next two years.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: This technology is well-understood and provided
by all major players. Outsourced performance testing has also been used successfully. However,
organizations are still struggling to achieve accurate results. SOA presents a greater potential for
less-linear processes, making performance testing more-complex, not a simple end-to-end script.
User Advice: Define best practices to follow when using these tools, and investigate
virtualization and simulation tools to improve the completeness of tests. Use production insight to
understand true workloads and test in an environment that matches production as closely as
possible.
Business Impact: Proper load testing will ensure that: You don't overspend on hardware and
software licenses during a deployment; and application failures are minimized.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: Twenty percent to 50% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: AdventNet; Borland; Compuware; Empirix; HP; IBM; Microsoft; RadView
Software; Worksoft

Open-Source Development Tools

Analysis By: Mark Driver
Definition: Open-source tools for analyzing, designing, developing, testing and debugging
programs.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Open-source application development tools have
existed for many years. Until recently, however, most were focused on low-level functions, such
as compilers and parsers. As the open-source model matures and expands, so do the tools that
support it. In particular, mainstream IT developers have been introduced to open-source
development tools through the use of dynamic languages such as Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby.
No open-source toolset has had as much influence in recent years as the Eclipse project
(www.eclipse.org). Eclipse serves as the foundation for most large-scale application development
tool providers (with the exceptions of Microsoft and Sun). Eclipse has become the underlying
framework and workbench for nearly all next-generation SOA and Web development efforts. An

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alternative OSS IDE, NetBeans (www.netbeans.org), is gaining momentum, as well proving that
more than one open-source solution can prosper in a market.
Even as some tools mature, others begin to emerge within mainstream efforts. Open-source
testing, modeling and configuration tools have begun to put serious pressure on closed-source
incumbent market leaders and show promise to further expand market influence in the coming
years.
User Advice: Open-source application development tools can provide a compelling balance
among cost, performance and features. However, most (including Eclipse) come with higher
levels of self-support efforts than closed-source alternatives. Consider direct adoption of opensource tools when they fit a strong need, but also consider tools that are based on open-source
technologies as well. Finally, consider the need for external service and support for all application
development tools when appropriate just because open source offers the option of self-support
does not mean that every application development organization should look toward this strategy
exclusively.
Business Impact: Like other markets, open-source development tools will commoditize market
dynamics. These tools will provide a universally accessible level of technology that is available to
developers and technology providers. Vendors that find a way to coexist (even synergize) with
open source will create the strongest long-term market presence. Vendors that choose to
compete directly against these open-source tools will find it increasingly difficult to maintain
market positions.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: Twenty percent to 50% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: ActiveState; Apache Software Foundation; CollabNet; Eclipse Foundation;
Free Software Foundation; Interface21; NetBeans.Org; Zend
Recommended Reading: "Managing Open-Source Service and Support"
"Learn the Basic Principles of Open-Source Software"

Business Process Analysis

Analysis By: Michael Blechar
Definition: Gartner defines BPA as the business modeling space in which business professionals
(that is, business users, business process architects and business process analysts) and IT
designers collaborate on business process designs and architectural frameworks, generally in
support of business process improvement initiatives. Awareness of the details of the business
process flow improves the quality of the requirements assessment for custom development, as
well as that of as-is and to-be gap analysis in packaged implementations. Furthermore, BPA can
serve as a bridge to improve the alignment of IT efforts with business initiatives.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Process modeling as part of BPA is becoming a
starting point for the growing number of BPM and compliance projects. Conversely, the majority
of BPM projects start with workflow tools in support of redesign, and subsequently add a BPA tool
to better understand their processes and simulate possible changes. Most BPA tools include
BAM capabilities, or partner with BAM tool vendors, which includes executive dashboarding into
business processes.

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User Advice: Use BPA tools to support EA and BPM initiatives, and as a starting point for
architected, model-driven application development and integration projects. BPA tools bring a
powerful, visual comprehension capability to a broad audience, so use them to improve process
understanding, the clarity and quality of requirements, and the credibility of business process
improvement projects.
Business Impact: Understanding complex business processes is a significant challenge.
Although there's a whole discipline around BPM, the assistance of a tool is essential to model
processes to realize cost and time savings. IT organizations may have to contribute substantial
modeling and operational support to enable BPA capabilities for the business.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: Casewise; iGrafx; IBM; IDS Scheer; Mega; Microsoft; Proforma; Telelogic
Recommended Reading: "Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis Tools, 2006"
"Consider Eight Functionality Selection Criteria When Choosing BPA Tools"
"Focusing on a Business Process Analysis Tool Acquisition"

Entering the Plateau

Automated Testing
Analysis By: Thomas Murphy
Definition: Functional testing tools designed to automate the process of retesting and find
regressions with which these tools are used to assess progress for every build of the project.
Tools are being integrated into the life cycle for improved reporting capabilities. They are also
beginning to address packaged applications and SOA detailed in separate profiles as well
as emerging, next-generation, scriptless-testing tools.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: This is a mature technology with broad adoption
and an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of what can be automated, the cost of
automation and maintaining automation suites. Improved integration into the life cycle has
enhanced the value of automated testing as organizations have shifted toward more-iterative
development paradigms. We are seeing a follow-on wave of products for SOAs and packages, as
well as the removal of the need to maintain scripts. Note that automated testing replaces the
application quality ecosystem item from the 2005 Application Development Hype Cycle. We have
expanded the point from the 2006 Hype Cycle to better represent where different parts of the
overall quality ecosystem are located in 2007.
User Advice: Organizations can reduce the cost of retesting software and better understand the
status of a project by using automated testing tools. Although automated, these tools can require
a good amount of manual intervention to maintain test scripts, limiting the ability of these products
to keep up with rapidly changing code.
Business Impact: High numbers of defects still seep through to deployment because of
inadequate testing. Automation and metrics provide a way to manage the software delivery
process and drive higher quality. This results in reduced operational and maintenance costs.
Benefit Rating: High

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Market Penetration: Twenty percent to 50% of target audience

Maturity: Mature mainstream
Sample Vendors: Borland; Compuware; Empirix; IBM; Mercury; Original Software; RadView;
Seapine Software

Java Platform, Enterprise Edition

Analysis By: Yefim Natis
Definition: Java EE is a Sun-sponsored and Java Community Process (JCP)-managed
architecture and programming model for multiplatform Java business applications. (Prior to this
version, the architecture was named J2EE). Java EE is implemented as Java EE application
servers by many commercial and some open-source, community-based vendors. JCP provides
compliance test cases and reference implementations for Java EE components. Many vendors
claim that their Java EE-compliant application servers pass all the test cases. The test cases are
available to licensees at a substantial fee. Some smaller vendors avoid the cost and claim
compatibility without having passed the tests.
A Java EE application server offers several container models for example, Servlets, session
EJB, entity EJB, Java Connector Architecture and Message-Driven Beans and other APIs,
such as Java Management eXtensions, Java Messaging Service (JMS) and Java API for XMLWeb services. It is a comprehensive platform architecture for modern application designs that:

Provides unprecedented application portability

Can offer near-mainframe-level quality of service (by some more-advanced

implementations)

Backed by a reasonably independent and large consortium of vendors members of

JCP

Is too complex for many software projects (although Java EE 5 is an improvement) and
supports only one programming language (Java).

In its complete rendition, it offers too much functionality for many business applications

Provides basic support for EDA via MDBs and JMS programming models

Designed well for distributed homogeneous applications, but lacks completeness for full
support of heterogeneous service-oriented applications

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The Java EE programming model dominates highend enterprise software projects. Thousands of mainstream enterprises use Java EE as the
platform for their mission-critical applications. Leading application ISVs use Java EE for their new
software development. The platform implementations range from high-cost, high-end versions to
low-cost, mass-market versions. Closed-source and open-source options compete for new
projects.
The Java EE specification changes have become gradual, incremental and infrequent.
Discontinuous innovation is rare and typically addresses isolated specification shortcomings. The
leading products are proven, dependable and interchangeable for most applications. The use
practices and the development methodologies are well-established, and the skilled resources are
broadly available and steadily increasing. The product is clearly near its plateau of productivity,
although not quite there yet. The new Java EE 5 has introduced a mild disruption to the installed
base. Introduction of EJB v.3 is technically incremental, but, in effect, discontinuous. It is a major
Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982
2007 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Page 41 of 47

re-architecture of the Java EE component model and, although the previous versions are required
to be supported by compliant implementations, no new development should invest in anything but
the more-efficient and easier-to-use EJB v.3, which, in turn, requires new skills and design
practices.
User Advice: Most mainstream business applications do not need the full power of a high-end
Java EE platform. Considering the high degree of compatibility between implementations of Java
EE, use the proven low-cost offerings for less-demanding parts of the application, and invest in
the high-end alternative platforms only for select high-demand parts of the application
environment.

Consider the open-source option as a viable alternative to the more-established, closedsource implementations.

Expect price decreases in the low end of Java EE and price increases in the lessstandard, high-end and extended Java EE arena.

Expect continuing emergence of new easy-to-use programming model frameworks for

Java (such as Interface 21 Spring Framework) and other core languages (such as PHP,
Ruby and Groovy), which are likely to confine the full and native Java EE
implementations to mostly high-end application projects.

Business Impact: In the mainstream enterprise practices, outside Windows-dedicated software

engineering, Java is approaching the status of COBOL of the 1970s and 1980s. The significant
degree of portability and the well-established interoperability of the licensed Java EE
implementations reduce costs of software engineering by making vendor implementations and
skilled engineering resources readily available in-house, through system integrators, or through
off-shore outsourcing.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: More than 50% of target audience
Maturity: Mature mainstream
Sample Vendors: Apache Software Foundation; BEA Systems; IBM; Oracle; Red Hat (JBoss);
SAP; Sun
Recommended Reading: "Key Issues for Platform Middleware"
"Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers, 2Q06"

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Appendices
Figure 3. Hype Cycle for Application Development, 2006

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visibility

Architected, Model-Driven SODA

Enterprise Architecture Tools

Scriptless Testing
BPM Suites
Offshore Outsourced Testing

SODA, Composite Applications and ISE

Unit Testing
Basic Web Services

Metadata Repositories

Collaborative Tools
for the Software
Development Life Cycle
Application Quality
Dashboards

Performance
Testing

Business
Process
Management

Advanced Web Services

Business Application
Package Testing

Automated Testing
.NET Managed Code Platform
Business Process Analysis

Business Rule Engines

UML Methodologies

SOA Testing
SDLC Security
Methodologies

Enterprise Software Change

and Configuration Management
ARAD SODA

As of December 2006

Technology
Trigger

Peak of
Inflated
Expectations

Trough of
Disillusionment

Slope of Enlightenment

Plateau of
Productivity

time
Years to mainstream adoption:
less than 2 years

2 to 5 years

5 to 10 years

more than 10 years

obsolete
before plateau

Source: Gartner (December 2006)

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Page 44 of 47

Hype Cycle Phases, Benefit Ratings and Maturity Levels

Table 1. Hype Cycle Phases
Phase

Definition

Technology Trigger

A breakthrough, public demonstration, product

launch or other event generates significant press
and industry interest.

Peak of Inflated Expectations

During this phase of overenthusiasm and unrealistic

projections, a flurry of well-publicized activity by
technology leaders results in some successes, but
more failures, as the technology is pushed to its
limits. The only enterprises making money are
conference organizers and magazine publishers.

Trough of Disillusionment

Because the technology does not live up to its

overinflated expectations, it rapidly becomes
unfashionable. Media interest wanes, except for a
few cautionary tales.

Slope of Enlightenment

Focused experimentation and solid hard work by an

increasingly diverse range of organizations lead to a
true understanding of the technology's applicability,
risks and benefits. Commercial, off-the-shelf
methodologies and tools ease the development
process.

Plateau of Productivity

The real-world benefits of the technology are

demonstrated and accepted. Tools and
methodologies are increasingly stable as they enter
their second and third generations. Growing
numbers of organizations feel comfortable with the
reduced level of risk; the rapid growth phase of
adoption begins. Approximately 20% of the
technology's target audience has adopted or is
adopting the technology as it enters the Plateau.

Years to Mainstream Adoption

The time required for the technology to reach the

Plateau of Productivity.

Source: Gartner (January 2007)

Table 2. Benefit Ratings

Benefit Rating

Definition

Transformational

Enables new ways of doing business across

industries that will result in major shifts in industry
dynamics

High

Enables new ways of performing horizontal or

vertical processes that will result in significantly
increased revenue or cost savings for an enterprise

Moderate

Provides incremental improvements to established

processes that will result in increased revenue or
cost savings for an enterprise

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Page 45 of 47

Benefit Rating

Definition

Low

Slightly improves processes (for example, improved

user experience) that will be difficult to translate into
increased revenue or cost savings

Source: Gartner (January 2007)

Table 3. Maturity Levels

Maturity Level

Status

Products/Vendors

Embryonic

In labs

None

Emerging

Commercialization by vendors
Pilots and deployments by
industry leaders

First generation
High price
Much customization

Adolescent

Maturing technology capabilities

and process understanding
Uptake beyond early adopters

Second generation
Less customization

Early mainstream

Proven technology
Vendors, technology and adoption
rapidly evolving

Third generation
More out of box
Methodologies

Mature mainstream

Robust technology
Not much evolution in vendors or
technology

Several dominant vendors

Legacy

Not appropriate for new

developments
Cost of migration constrains
replacement

Maintenance revenue focus

Obsolete

Rarely used

Used/resale market only

Source: Gartner (January 2007)

RECOMMENDED READING
"Understanding Gartner's Hype Cycles, 2007"

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Page 46 of 47

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Hype CycHype Cycle For Application Development 2007le For Application Development 2007

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Hype CycHype Cycle For Application Development 2007le For Application Development 2007

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Research

Publication Date: 29 June 2007

Hype Cycle for Application Development, 2007

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

What You Need to Know

The Hype Cycle

Application Security Testing

more than 10 years

Source: Gartner (June 2007)

The Priority Matrix

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

years to mainstream adoption

more than 10 years

Collaborative Tools for the

Source: Gartner (June 2007)

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Market Penetration: Five percent to 20% of target audience

Metadata Ontology Management

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

SDLC Security Methodologies

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Recommended Reading: "Security as Engineering Discipline: The SSE-CMM's Objectives,

Collaborative Tools for the Software Development Life Cycle

Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Application delivery globalization in which

Enterprise Information Management

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Application Quality Dashboards

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

quality and standards compliance. Project-management-office-centric tools will also include

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Recommended Reading: "Are Federated Metadata Approaches to Business Service

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Organizations increasingly recognize the business need to achieve a more predictable

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

More service providers are aggressively marketing application testing services.

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Increased rigor and productivity by resources throughout the development process

Improved performance of applications once they're in production

Better and more-consistent quality control processes

SOA Governance Technologies

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Recommended Reading: "Criteria for Evaluating a Vendor's SOA Governance Strategy"

Globally Sourced Testing

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

further reducing overall application costs). However, expectations should be managed.

Architected, Model-Driven SODA

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Enterprise Architecture Tools

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Application Security Testing

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Sliding Into the Trough

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Organizational and process definition and adoption

PPM process automation via technology

Parallel program management office creation or improvement initiative

Business Application Package Testing

Agile Development Methodology

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Climbing the Slope

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Microsoft .NET Application Platform

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982

Linux as a Mission-Critical DBMS Platform

Publication Date: 29 June 2007/ID Number: G00147982