Business Objects set to expand in India

Business Objects (BO) a global business intelligence (BI) solutions provider, plans to double its sales and support staff by 2008. Having opened an office in Mumbai, it is also expanding its Delhi and Chennai operations.

The Indian BI market is pegged at $47.4 million by Frost & Sullivan lead by BFSI (41 per cent), IT/ITeS (14 per cent) and Telecom (12 per cent) verticals. Business Objects has a market share of 16 per cent and has competitors like SAS and Teradata. With the first stage of IT adoption by Indian organisations over, they are now looking at analytical tools like BI.

Keith Budge, senior vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific and Japan, says India remains a key market for the company in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region after China. The company aims to achieve a growth rate of 70-100 per cent over the next few years. Its revenue from the APAC region for the fourth quarter 2006 was $25 million a 26 per cent increase year-on-year. Apart from increasing its headcount, the company is also focusing on the mid-market segment.

To cater to their demand, BO will be launching suite of applications in India targeted towards the medium business by early next month.

The Indian BI market has seen massive churning with players such as Microsoft and Oracle also providing BI solutions. But Budge is not bothered by such entrants.

"BI is an application that needs to be platform agnostic. Whereas the applications that they provide are tied-up to their technology platforms," he said.

Budge said: "Mid-market is an important aspect of BOs business in the APAC region, with close to 57 per cent of the revenues contributed by mid-market and 43 per cent coming from the enterprises."

Moreover, its plans to increase the current 10 direct partners to 20 by the end of this year along with two national distributors, Ingram Micro and Sonata. The company is also increasing it focus on its R&D centre in Bangalore. With 300 people, the centre caters to the Indian and regional customers. Currently, the Indian centre contributes in the product development with the global research team.

"The centre is a part of our global research facility and also looks into some specific product developments. We also plan to extend the role of the centre in providing support to customers in India and in the region," added Budge.

Sanjay Deshmukh, country manager, India/SAARC, Business Object, said, "One of the trends that we have seen is the increasing uptake of BI among organisations looking to be acquired. They use this application as a criterion that will increase the valuation of their company."