UML Design Tools Market Continues to Face Competitive Pressure from Low-Priced Alternatives

Natick, Massachusetts – December 15, 2006 – The growing complexity of today’s embedded software and systems has driven many developers to consider a model-driven development strategy.

Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) indicates that more developers are expecting to adopt model-driven development approaches, including UML, over the next two years to cope with this complexity and an increase in the lines of software code per device.

However, increased adoption of software modeling tools has not translated into equivalent increases in commercial market revenue to the degree that VDC had previously anticipated. VDC suspects that a number of factors, including the availability of low-priced UML modeling tools, have significantly impacted the growth of the commercial market for software-modeling tools.

According to Matt Volckmann, Senior Analyst from VDC’s Embedded Software Practice, “Within the embedded UML market, numerous lower-priced commercial alternatives have appeared.
VDC believes that providers of these lower-priced tools are offering solutions that are adequate for the needs of developers that have fewer highend requirements.”

VDC expects continued adoption of model-based development tools, as the benefit of modeling complex systems helps developers to organize and manage complex software and system development. These tools currently see the most use in the early phases of the design process. However, as adoption increases and leading suppliers continue to advance their solutions to drive modeling environments to the center of the development process, VDC expects additional users to more readily acquire additional tool extensions with increasingly sophisticated capabilities.

One of the keys will be to understand the requirements of new adopters in order to capture additional share. According to Volckmann, “Findings from our end-user research show that early adopters of design automation tools (those currently using these technologies) have quite different characteristics than the group of developers yet to adopt these types of tools.”

Within the Volume IV: Embedded Design Automation and Simulation Tools report, VDC offers several strategies for commercial software modeling tools suppliers in the embedded market to effectively compete within this emerging UML space. In addition to software modeling tools such as UML, this report also includes analysis of other modeling and simulation technologies in current use within embedded development, many of which have seen more steady commercial revenue growth.