Business intelligence tools market led by SAP and IBM

The business intelligence tools market has been forecast to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.17% over the period 2011-2015.

Key factors contributing to this market growth include the need to manage large volumes of enterprise data, along with the increasing adoption of SaaS-based business intelligence tools.

The term business intelligence (BI) represents the tools and systems that play a key role in the strategic planning process of the corporation. These systems allow a company to gather, store, access and analyse corporate data to aid in decision-making.

Generally these systems will illustrate business intelligence in the areas of customer profiling, customer support, market research, market segmentation, product profitability, statistical analysis, and inventory and distribution analysis to name a few.

Most companies collect a large amount of data from their business operations. To keep track of that information, a business and would need to use a wide range of software programs, such as Excel, Access and different database applications for various departments throughout their organisation.

Using multiple software programs makes it difficult to retrieve information in a timely manner and to perform analysis of the data.

The top two business intelligence vendors for the full year were SAP and IBM, each capturing more than $1 billion in software revenue during 2010.

SAP enjoyed strong growth in a number of large country markets, including Australia, Canada, and Russia. IBM's performance was bolstered by strong results in Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

The top 10 vendors accounted for 72% of the overall market in 2010, with four vendors -- MicroStrategy, Oracle, Panorama Software and QlikTech -- growing faster than the overall market.

To continue growing in the BI tools market, vendors need to align their technology packaging and pricing with the growing preference among end-users for departmental and incremental projects and subscription pricing. Although the latter still represents only a small portion of the BI tools market, SaaS and cloud BI offerings are growing three times faster than the rest of the market.

For more information on the business intelligence tools market, see the latest research: Business Intelligence Tools Market

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