The market for data warehousing in Europe is being fueled by consulting work on year 2000 and euro compliance, according to market analyst International Data Corp. In a market which is growing overall at 24% a year, the professional services element is way out ahead and gaining ground at a rate of 34% every year. Although next year may see the disappearance of corporate budget lock-downs and the lessening of corresponding consulting revenue, IDC predicts that the market will accelerate, driven by loosened IT budgets.
Although the euro and Y2K should drop off the priority lists of CFOs and CIOs, the wider problem of making use of data warehouses remains. Data warehouse customers have spent millions on the physical databases to store the information. But as new customer relationship management and internet technology allows them to make better use of the data, they are finding themselves having to shell out for tools to better extract and distribute the information locked in their repositories. The market for analytic applications and extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) software is another hot one, whereas that for servers and hardware (15%) is falling below the 24% average for the sector.
