Mumbai, Mar 17 (IANS): The worldwide application integration and middleware (AIM) software market will hit $27 billion this year -- an increase of seven per cent from last year, a new report said on Friday.

"Growth in mobile, big data, analytics, in-memory computing, cloud and Internet of Things initiatives is associated with digital business and requires application and integration professionals to invest in new AIM technologies," said Fabrizio Biscotti, research vice president at Gartner.

This, in turn, drives fresh integration approaches with new AIM technologies at their core, such as application programmable interface management and integration platform as a service, he added.

The AIM software market is split into mature and emerging segments.

Mature segments are large in size and most of the market is consolidated in the hands of a few established players.

A high proportion of revenue is generated from maintenance fees and growth is slow, typically single-digit.

Examples of mature segments include application servers and business process management suites.

"Cloud application infrastructure offerings are still maturing, yet already meet market demands for greater agility, scalability, productivity and efficiency better than their on-premises alternatives," said Biscotti.