Revenue from worldwide business intelligence (BI) platform, analytic applications and performance management (PM) software has increased by 4.2 percent in 2009 to more than $9.3bn, as compared with $8.9bn in 2008, according to Gartner.
Dan Sommer, senior research analyst at Gartner, said: Even though growth was nowhere near the levels of 2008, and by no means immune to the recession, BI showed that it is not as cyclical as many other software areas, recording healthy growth in one of the toughest years recorded in software history.
The dominant vendors continued to put BI, analytics and PM front and center of their messaging. Organizations largely continued their BI projects, hoping that resulting transparency and insight would enable cost-cuts and improved productivity and agility. However, there is no doubt pressure has intensified on deal sizes and price points on new sales throughout the year.
According to Gartner, the top five vendors continued to make up most of the market with 71 percent market share.
Mr Sommer said: The large vendors held their own. As IT is consolidating, BI spending often went to a few strategic vendors. However, the application-centric vendors didn’t have the same up-selling momentum as they did in 2008.
Being the No. 1 vendor in combined worldwide BI, analytics and PM software revenue in 2009, SAP accounted for 22 percent of the market, followed by Oracle, SAS Institute, IBM and Microsoft, Gartner said.
SAP continued to maintain the lead BI platforms and Oracle maintained its leadership with the former Hyperion portfolio in the area of corporate performance management, while SAS remained the leader in analytic applications and PM.
According to Gartner, IBM has emerged as a strong challenger in all three areas with its services-led offering, showing above market growth and strengthening its positions during 2009, while Microsoft also continues to gain users by embedding BI functionality in their wider Microsoft environments.
Mr. Sommer said: While IT is trying to rationalize around one or a few vendors, the market for self-service BI is wide open. All vendors, small and large, on-premises, open-source or in the cloud, are flocking to cater for this space, trying to co-exist with the enterprise standard.
We see more buying from line-of-business, as dashboards and data discovery tools with in-memory analytics and ease-of-use visualization has made it an attractive and fastvalue proposition to bypass IT. The vendors in this segment, together with the open-source crowd, continue to be the fastest growers in the BI market.
