As 2009 comes to close, ISVs are seeing a more promising business environment than the challenges faced during the first half of the year. While many ISVs saw client's purse strings tighten, they've also found ways to demonstrate the effective use of IT to help clients work smarter by doing more with less, improving efficiencies and cutting costs without sacrificing quality.

This year, we saw ISVs relying more heavily than ever on IBM for market insight and access to resources to help them gain news skills, get to market faster and generate leads. In fact, we're spending $2.5 billion this year towards the success of our global partner community.

As 2010 approaches, partners are forecasting that growth is not only possible; it is expected across several market segments. More and more, ISVs in particular are identifying core competencies and specializing in industry-focused solutions, much in tune with IBM's smarter planet vision and strategy to align ourselves with partners that, with our combined strengths, can make substantial infrastructure improvements around the world, industry by industry.

-- Mark Hanny, Vice President of Channels and ISV Alliances, IBM

Healthcare Analytics Will Grow 35%
"There is a looming perfect storm in the healthcare industry. Healthcare organizations are being pressured to get more value out of their costly IT systems to support improved patient care and safety, while lowering costs. To accomplish these objectives, healthcare providers are realizing that they must have access to more detailed clinical information.

"The first step is to capture data from a variety of disparate clinical and operational IT systems to create a single electronic view of the patient's health data. The second is to apply advanced, but user-friendly, clinical analytics to produce actionable information in support of disease management, quality reporting and monitoring, best practices, clinical research, etc."

-- By Rob Albertson, Vice President, Convergence CT

Cloud, SaaS Solutions to Double in 2010
"The demand for SaaS and Cloud Computing will double in 2010 compared to the previous year, due to the fundamental changes in the marketplace. During the last 18 months of economic meltdown, companies have adjusted by trimming payrolls and reducing spending. To stay competitive, they have realized that immediate access to actionable information, greater collaboration with their customers and visibility to trends within their respective 'sand box' is an absolute must. Internal IT groups, with reduced budgets are unable to meet the growing business users' demands.

"Therefore, companies looking to do more with less, will reduce IT costs, cutting internal IT positions and reducing budgets related to hardware and software purchases. Since the business need will remain the same, or perhaps even grow, companies will opt to outsource and pay a fixed monthly fee to address critical business needs.

-- By Jay Hakami, President and CEO, Sky IT Group

Stimulus will Encourage Healthcare's Demand for ISVs
"The health information technology market has significantly grown, and will continue this trend, as approximately $20 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding supports the implementation and 'meaningful use' of Electronic Medical Record and Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems to improve patient care and reduce health care costs.

"In 2009, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) evolved into an important focus of the federal programs, promoting the creation of clinical networks to enable complete interoperability and full collaboration on patient care. With more than $300 million in support of HIE activities in 2009 and 2010, and stimulus providing more than $1.2 billion in federal grants for EHR systems, we foresee significant market growth in this area. As the industry moves towards meeting the requirements for federal reimbursement, we anticipate a greater demand in 2010 from hospitals, RHIO's and states to turn to the ISV community to overcome their challenges and deploy a complete HIE solution."

-- By Glenn Keet, President, Axolotl Corp.

Stimulus will Encourage Smart Grid Growth
"Smart Grid-related communications technologies, enterprise integration software, and services at all levels worldwide will see rapid growth in 2010. Backed with $4.5 billion in U.S. stimulus funding, we see a number of new customers and projects getting underway and existing projects are increasingly aware of the value of enterprise integration software and services to realizing the full value of their investments."

-- By Eric Miller, Senior Vice President, Trilliant

Focus on Security, Regulation in Smart Grid
"Security in smart grid applications will become a major issue, particularly for those companies who have employed unlicensed networks as their backhaul solution and those that chose to build their solutions on non-enterprise platforms. Unlicensed transport solutions are subject to harmful interference and jamming due to the nature of industrial, scientific and medical radio frequency bands used by many devices with applications that have nothing to do with utility operations. In this area, ISVs with a security focus in the smart grid space will see growth.

"Renewable energy, such as solar and wind also will force a new emphasis on grid stability and regulating reserves. Grid regulation for these sources of energy will increasingly rely on natural gas generation to provide stability. Thus, the cost of renewable energy will be inextricably tied to the future price of natural gas."

-- By Joe Forbes Jr., COO, Consert Inc.

Government Will Experience Dynamic Growth
"Just as Data Management was the challenge of the 70's and Information Management the challenge of the 90's, Active Content in Knowledge Management is the challenge our federal clients are looking to address today and increasingly so in 2010. Effective Knowledge Management involves mastering content, process and connectivity in order to optimize operational efficiency, worker productivity and overall organizational responsiveness.

"Vendors who strictly provide software point solutions will not experience the same dynamic growth of companies capable of delivering full-scale integrated solutions. Companies that focus on helping clients rapidly automate enterprise-level business processes based on active content frameworks, will able to provide both tremendous returns on investment, often in the millions of dollars, and dramatic efficiency improvements for these clients."

-- Frank Ricotta, CTO, Enterprise Information Management, Inc. (EIM)