Biz Analytics Software Mkt To Reach $50.7 Bn By 2016

In 2011 the business analytics market extended its post-2009 recovery with another stellar performance by growing worldwide revenues 14.1 percent year over year. International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that it will continue to grow at a 9.8 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2016 to reach $50.7 billion. Helping to drive this growth is media attention focused on Big Data, putting broader business analytics on the agenda of more senior executives. Additionally, new business analytics software options based on non-relational data management technology are forcing all vendors to accelerate R&D efforts and acquisitions focused on new tools and applications and the integration of new and existing technologies.

“Driven by the attention-grabbing headlines for Big Data and more than three decades of evolutionary and revolutionary developments in technology and best practices, the business analytics software market has crossed the chasm into the mainstream mass market,” says Dan Vesset, Program Vice President for IDC’s Business Analytics Solutions. “The demand for business analytics solutions is exposing the previously minor issue of the shortage of highly skilled IT and analytics staff.”

Of the three primary segments of the worldwide business analytics software market, the data warehousing platform software segment grew the fastest in 2011 at 15.2 percent year over year, followed by the analytic applications segment, which grew at 13.3 percent, and the BI and analytic tools segment, which grew at 13.2 percent.

Additional key findings from IDC’s research include:

• As more organisations with less business analytics experience are becoming interested in this technology, vendors and users will have to devote more resources to business analytics services.

• A growing emphasis on industry and business process–specific analytic applications is going to take hold over the forecast period. This will be a long-term trend that is likely going to accelerate M&A activity in the business analytics market. Recent acquisitions by large business analytics vendors will require these vendors to execute go-to-market strategies that depend on ever finer segmentation of target audiences by industry, region, and organisation size.

• The growth in appliances, SaaS, and outsourcing deals for business analytics technology will likely mean that end users will pay increasingly less attention to specific technology components, instead focusing on the business value arguments and overall functionality. System performance, availability, security, and manageability will all matter greatly, but how they are achieved will be less of a point for differentiation amongst vendors.