This IDC study is based on the findings of IDC's second applications statistics survey, AppStat Survey #2, which was executed in November 2006. The survey results presented here focus on software spending plans and on the adoption of open source, mobile functionality, software as a service (SaaS), and service oriented architecture (SOA) by 113 survey respondents who are users of product and portfolio management (PPM) software solutions.

Gisela Wilson, director of IDC's Product, Project, and Portfolio Management Solutions program, points out: "These surveys will help PPM applications vendors to evaluate the level of technology they can expect to sell to their customers. This is particularly true for trends that receive a great deal of publicity, such as open source, mobility functionality, software as a service, and service oriented architecture. In spite of this hype, actual adoption is often fairly slow. End users are quite willing to sit back and wait until maturity; let technomissionaries risk their jobs on untried technologies."