Worldwide Automated Software Quality Market Shares, 2023: Demand for Software Velocity, GenAI, and AI Continues to Drive Double-Digit Growth

This IDC study provides an analysis of the 2023 automated software quality (ASQ) vendor market shares. It discusses IDC's ASQ assessment with specific vendor analysis for a market that evolved with a third year of double-digit growth of 11.7% to $5.15 billion in 2023 as compared with growth of 10.8% in 2022 (on updated ASQ numbers) to $4.61 billion. Organizations invested deeply in ASQ solutions to address increased software delivery complexity and velocity driven by a variety of vectors (including business, technology, software sourcing, and diverse platform deployment, collaboration, and cloud demands). Enhanced and evolving analytics with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), other AI and ML, and robotic process automation (RPA) improved ease of access and data leverage. Nearly all ASQ solution providers experienced revenue increases because of significant digital innovation and DevOps engagement, in the context of competitive pressures for high-quality, secure software delivery and a global economy that remained volatile and unpredictable. This market growth occurred even with the challenges of evolving product releases, shifts to microservices and cloud delivery models, acquisition transitions, and encroachment by open source tools. A major revenue player, OpenText (which acquired Micro Focus 1Q23), at 7.3% share (down from 8.3% in 2022), was down slightly at -1.9%. Tricentis had growth of 10.0% to 5.2% share, and Microsoft had growth of 1.2% also at 5.2% share, followed by BrowserStack, SmartBear, and Perforce. Midsize innovative vendors in emerging technology areas such as mobile, code analytics, software quality analysis and measurement (SQAM), and application security testing (AST) and cloud testing contributed to improved ASQ growth in 2023. We are also observing the impact of OSS usage and integration by vendors (such as Selenium and Cucumber). We also saw acquisitions during 2023 and in 1H24. Longer term and moving into 2H24-2025, the ASQ market is slated for an overall trajectory of growth. IDC expects ongoing acquisitions in the near term as enterprise providers seek to broaden their ASQ portfolios including AI and value-centric capabilities and as organizations respond to increasing technology and edge platform complexity while driving innovation with flexible work and increasing use of AI."In a global economy that experienced continuing volatility during 2023, digitization and rapid delivery of high-quality software saw increased investment and demand for ASQ solutions and a third year of double-digit growth, along with acquisitions and shifting of major vendor allocations for enterprise ASQ. Market and product evolution occurred as innovators executed high growth and larger vendors delivered more complete quality and life-cycle management solutions, and consolidation continues," says Melinda Ballou, research director for Agile ALM, Quality, and Portfolio Strategies at IDC. "As a result of emerging GenAI, AI, ML, and RPA technologies and the earlier disruption and ongoing software quality and deployment challenges, we saw increased ASQ investments. Smaller vendors continue to play a crucial role for market innovation, as exemplified in cross-stack testing, quality measurement with static and dynamic analyses and security leverage, and agile, embedded, and mobile solutions; while these areas have been dominated by small and medium-sized companies, we see enterprise and suite providers engaging as well. We expect additional acquisitions, and despite a volatile worldwide economic outlook resulting from the geopolitical conflict and environment challenges, we expect strong ASQ growth in the 2024-2028 time frame."