Business Intelligence Software Sales Expected to Reach Nearly $11 Billion in 2011

The global market for business intelligence (BI) software is expected to climb by nearly 9.7 percent to $10.8 billion in 2011, prodded by user demand for more intuitive and interactive tools, new opportunities for high-value applications, and the technology’s emergence as a valuable lever for business decisions, according to researcher Gartner Inc.

The researcher said that among enterprise software segments, BI is one of the fastest growing as business users increasingly rely on the technology to help their organizations become smarter, more nimble and efficient. Gartner said that chief information officers (CIOs) participating in its annual global survey last month ranked BI technology fifth out of 10 top priorities in 2011.

“It's a sign of the strategic importance of BI that investment remains strong,” said Ian Bertram, Gartner managing vice president.

“This market segment has remained strong because the dominant vendors continued to put BI, analytics and performance management at the centre 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,” he said.

Bertram said that among BI business users ease-of-use has surpassed functionality as the primary reason for purchasing the technology. Users often choose easier to use data discovery tools over traditional BI platforms and, in the process, are changing market dynamics, he said.

Gartner said that the market also is being driven by new opportunities for high value BI applications as the technology expands to handle analysis of large, volatile and diverse data.

The researcher said that its user surveys point to improved decision-making as a key driver of BI purchases. Capabilities that evolve BI from an information delivery system to a decision platform will increase the technology’s value and advance its growth, Gartner said.