Since its inception as a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) draft specification, InfoTrends/CAP Ventures has tracked the importance and excitement surrounding the extensible Markup Language (XML). For the past two years, we have seen the XML dialog move from the technical fringe of the SGML and W3C communities to the center stage in trade press, in mainstream media such as the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, and certainly in technical conferences including InfoTrends/CAP Ventures’ Documation Exposition and the Document Software Conference (now called Dynamic Content).

Over the past two years, we have seen increasing interest in this technology and its application. This past year, there has been a marked shift in the emphasis of our research clients’ and conference attendees’ inquiries about XML. Rather than focusing on the XML technology, questions now address the practical implementations, benefits, and business drivers for XML products. This is an indication that the market for XML-aware tools and products is growing rapidly and that our clients would benefit by knowing about its size and scope. This study on the early adopters of XML is designed to provide such information.