Gartner expects the market for business intelligence (BI) software in India to reach revenue of $81.5m in 2012, an increase of 15.6% over 2011. Worldwide BI software market revenue is forecast to grow 8.7% to reach around $12.7bn in 2012.
According to Gartner analysts, the market for BI platforms will remain one of the fastest growing software markets despite expectations of an economic slowdown.
Organisations still look up to BI as a key tool for smarter, more agile and efficient business. Besides, they are trying to expand its scope from just an information delivery mechanism.
Gartner research director Bhavish Sood said the BI market has remained strong because the dominant vendors continue to put BI, analytics and performance management at the centre of their messaging, while end-user organisations largely continue their BI projects in a bid to ensure that transparency and insight will enable them to cut costs and improve productivity and agility down the line.
Sood added, "It’s a sign of the strategic importance of BI that investment remains strong."
According to the research firm, decision making in India has research director been based on either "gut feelings" or on the business experience of managers.
BI will allow enterprises to make more fact-based decisions. BI promotes revenue growth and faster innovation through shorter product and service life cycles and the ability to find where value is being created in the business.
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Sood said, "The demand side of the BI platform market in early 2011 was defined by an intensified struggle between business users’ need for ease of use and flexibility on the one hand, and IT’s need for standards and control on the other."
He added, "With ‘ease of use’ now surpassing ‘functionality’ for the first time as the dominant BI platform buying criterion, vocal, demanding and influential business users are increasingly driving BI purchasing decisions, most often choosing easier to use data discovery tools over traditional BI platforms — with or without IT’s consent."
According to Gartner, three major demand-side factors continue to expand use and drive BI platform revenue growth. They are consumerisation of BI, support for extreme data performance; emerging data sources and BI as a decision platform.
Gartner’s user surveys show that major driver of BI purchases is "improved decision making".
