Business Intellingence revenue increases

Worldwide business intelligence (BI) platforms, analytic applications and performance management software revenue reached $8.8 billion in 2008, a 21.7 percent increase from 2007 revenue of $7.2 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.

“Industry consolidation has led to an increase in growth, despite the necessary product rationalizations and organizational changes,” said Dan Sommer, senior research analyst at Gartner. “The large stack vendors, especially the application vendors, have put a lot of focus and sales power behind their newly acquired BI products, with accelerated migrations and upgrades in the installed base as a result.”

Following SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects, the company was the No. 1 vendor in combined worldwide BI, analytics and performance management software revenue in 2008, accounting for 24 percent of the market , followed by SAS Institute, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft.

“Most, but not all, of the midtier independent BI vendors targeting the enterprise struggled more, which indicates that there is bifurcation in buying to either more stack-centric behavior, or smaller tactical departmental projects,” Mr. Sommer said.

“In tough times, the first step is to increase transparency which helps identify cost-centers, and then to more tightly align strategy with execution,” Mr. Sommer said. “This is why demand for BI, analytics and performance management is relatively strong even in a bearish economy. However, we don’t expect these two markets to sustain the same high growth rate in 2009, as much of it came from the lowest-hanging fruit in up-selling products of an acquired company to an existing installed base and because the first half of 2009 was softer due to the recession.”