IBM Corp says it is the spiraling number of data stores containing customer and e-business information which is driving growth at its $4bn business intelligence group. Sales of CRM systems, including data warehousing, call center and sales and marketing automation, make up some 40% of that figure.
IBM believes the $27bn business intelligence market is growing at a compound rate of roughly 45%, somewhere in the middle of analysts’ expectations. 48% of the business is at the high-end, with companies that have more than 1,000 employees, while just 6% comes from companies with less than 50 staff. The group now has 1,000 staff from the 75 when it started. It partners with most of the business intelligence ISV community and offers its own tools including CRM applications from its CorePoint unit. It works with and competes against the likes of Siebel and Oracle as well as systems integrators.
