Organizations today collect enormous amounts of data from numerous sources, but the problem is how to turn that information into insight.
Business intelligence (BI) software is designed to give an organization the ability to extract meaning from its data. With these tools, companies can mine the raw data they obtain from multiple sources to expose patterns of customer behavior and make informed business decisions. This insight into market trends and customer habits can help companies identify cost-cutting ideas, uncover new business opportunities, develop crossover sales leads, react quickly to retail demand, optimize prices and more.
While older BI tools were overly complex and usually required assistance from the IT department, the latest BI software gives everyone in the organization access to simple tools that allow them to utilize analytics, alerts and feedback mechanisms to improve individual performance.
The worldwide market for BI software is forecast to grow 9.7 percent to reach $10.8 billion in 2011, according to Gartner’s latest enterprise software forecast. Growth is expected to slow slightly over the forecast period to 2014, but remain in the high single digits. Gartner’s view is that the market for BI platforms will remain one of the fastest-growing software markets despite sluggish economic growth in most regions.
Organizations continue to turn to BI as a vital tool for smarter, more agile and efficient business. BI ranked number five on the list of the top 10 technology priorities for CIOs in 2011, according to Gartner’s annual global CIO survey.
“It’s a sign of the strategic importance of BI that investment remains strong,” said Ian Bertram, managing vice president at Gartner. “This market segment has remained strong because the dominant vendors continued to put BI, analytics and performance management at the center of their messaging, while end-user organizations largely continued their BI projects, hoping that resulting transparency and insight will enable them to cut costs and improve productivity and agility down the line.”
Bertram said the demand side of the BI platform market in 2010 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.
“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,” said Bertram.
Gartner has identified three major factors that continue to expand use and drive BI platform revenue growth:
Consumerization of BI — BI tools must be simple, mobile and “fun” in order to expand use and value. Business users are demanding the same experience from their BI tools that they have come to enjoy with their personal tools. The need for more intuitive and interactive BI tools and applications extends to users on the go, but the vast majority of organizations have yet to embrace mobile BI. This is set to change very quickly with the proliferation of Apple’s iPhone and iPad products.
Support for Extreme Data Performance,
Emerging Data Sources — Capabilities that enable the analysis of large, volatile and diverse data will open up possibilities for a broad range of new, high-value BI applications and will be another driver of BI growth. This includes in-memory technology and social and content analytics. Combining these capabilities with support for extreme data volumes and consumer-oriented tools opens up possibilities for a broad range of new, high-value BI applications and will be another driver of growth.
BI as a Decision Platform — Gartner’s user surveys show that “improved decision making” is the top driver of BI purchases. Capabilities that will evolve BI from an information delivery system to a decision platform will increase the value of BI and drive its growth.
