<p>The rapid increase in cloud deployments is creating growth in application areas associated with social business and customer experience. At the same time, the management and leveraging of information for competitive advantage is driving growth in markets associated with big data and analytics. Both of these initiatives require a reliable and secure infrastructure, driving investments in security and system/network management, according to a new report by International Data Corp. (IDC).</p><p>Big data and analytics are closely tied to the fast growth of social business software markets, where the combination of contextual data and the "right" expertise is becoming critical for supporting enterprise decision-making and data-driven customer experience solutions, IDC says in its Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker.</p><p>The report provides total market size and vendor share for 82 segments of the global software market. The Tracker covers more than 800 software vendors across 49 countries markets. Historical market size, vendor share and forecasts are updated on a semiannual basis.</p><p>In the applications primary market segment, which comprised 49 percent of total software revenue, year-over-year growth for 2012 was 3.3 percent, which is slightly lower than for software overall. Within this market segment, IDC says, customer relationship management and collaborative applications stood out with year-over-year growth rates near 7 percent.</p><p><a href="http://www.information-management.com/news/Cloud-Analytics-Deployments-Fuel-Social-Business-10024310-1.html">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/enterprise-software-growth-driven-by-big-data-cloud-idc/">Enterprise Software Growth Driven by Big Data, Cloud: IDC - eWeek</a> (eWeek)</p><p><a href="http://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2013/apr/22/microsoft-remains-top-software-vendor-cloud-increases-its-influence/">Microsoft remains top software vendor as cloud increases its influence</a> (CloudTech)</p><p><a href="http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/saas/5508/idc-cloud-and-big-data-drive-enterprise-software-growth">IDC: Cloud and Big Data drive enterprise software growth</a> (Cloud Pro)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=djXC_vfSPKxHt0M88yB1zL77VmtOM&ned=us">7 additional articles.</a></p>