Shield: Product Development in a Distributed Team

Evolution of the Market
The market for these technologies came into focus in the mid-1990s and has been growing slowly ever since. Many vendors have come and gone; leaders have yet to emerge. But most people agree that even though the Internet was built with an “information wants to be free” environment in mind, DRM is becoming a more and more fundamental idea in the evolution of digital content; because of this, the market should grow rapidly. Recent (June 2001) research by IDC predicted that the market for DRM technology and services, which it estimated at US$96 million in 2000, would be US$200 million in 2001, and ultimately US$3.5 billion in 2005 — an annual growth rate of over 100 percent.