This IDC study analyzes why the software markets for product life-cycle management (PLM), enterprise asset management (EAM), and project/portfolio management (PPM) have begun to converge. It identifies the business and technology drivers underlying the convergence and discusses the benefits to customers and impact on the software supply side of the converging market IDC refers to as product, project, and portfolio management (3PM).

As enterprises tackle increasingly complex products and services and manage ever more diversified employee teams and business networks, the need to more closely control product development and employee and partner management is growing. IDC believes that these needs are driving the convergence of formerly standalone applications, namely PLM, PPM, and EAM, into a new solution, 3PM.

This study, the first of two parts, presents the emergence of this new application solution and discusses the future requirements from 3PM and opportunities for application vendors, investors, and end users.

Evan Quinn, group vice president of Applications Research, explains: "Organizations are grasping that the product development life cycle concerns people processes, not just the work output of people. Suppliers in the PLM and PPM arenas that pay attention to their customers have come to recognize the convergence between PLM and PPM and have begun to take steps to integrate their application offerings to support this convergence. IDC has named this convergence 3PM to reflect the three Ps of product, project, and portfolio management."

Gisela Wilson, director of IDC's Product Life-Cycle Management program, explains: "3PM represents the long-term market alignment of applications that until now have largely existed standalone. 3PM blends the benefits of integrating data, content, and analytics with better business process visibility and knowledge worker decision support - clearly a powerful combination."