'Business Intelligence' software revenue to reach $13.8 bn in 2013: Gartner

BI, analytics have growtn to become 4th largest application software segment as end users continue to prioritise BI, spend more to improve decision making & analysis

Worldwide Business Intelligence (BI) software revenue is expected to reach $13.8 billion in 2013, a 7% increase from 2012, according to Gartner. Inc. The market for same is expected to reach $17.1 billion by 2016.
 
"BI and analytics have grown to become the fourth-largest application software segment as end users continue to prioritise BI, information-centric projects and spending to improve decision making and analysis," said Dan Sommer, principal research analyst at Gartner.

He further adds, "As more and more information is generated, business models need reinvention, and it's increasingly clear that mastering analytics on big data will be a key driver in the coming years."
 
Today, company's requirements for the BI application is complemented by buying in business units for departmental and workgroup analysis.

Compared with 2011 growth was 16 percent, 2013 and the coming years are expected to be slower, with growth in the high single digits. However, in the near term, growth will be hampered by sluggish macro-indicators and slow sale cycles of the end-to-end BI deals.

The emerging data-as-a-service trend could significantly grow the market for BI and analytics platforms. Organisations subscribe to industry-specific data services that bundle a narrow set of data with BI and analytic capabilities embedded. Since most companies will provide a data-as-a-service offering, there is a huge market for BI and analytic platform providers.

This is a mature market and has been on several company's priority list for years. However, there is a lot of demand that is yet to be met. Many companies apply descriptive analytics to traditional subjects like finance and sales, but BI and analytics is yet to be applied to subject areas like HR and marketing,.

Since many mid-size enterprises are yet to even start their BI and analytic initiatives, they expect the market for BI and analytics to remain one of the fastest-growing software markets.