According to Gartner, global business intelligence (BI) software revenue is expected to grow to $17.1 billion by 2016. The revenue from BI software is estimated to grow to $13.8 billion in 2013, an increase of 7 per cent from 2012.
Over the years, BI and analytics have become the fourth largest application software segment. According to Gartner, end users are focusing on BI and information-centric projects to improve decision making and analysis.
Gartner underscores that with more data and information being generated, existing business models need to be reinvented. Going ahead, developing competence in analytics on big data is going to be a key driver for BI software industry.
The Nexus of Forces comprising cloud, mobile, social and information are also driving the growth in the industry. Enabled by the Nexus of Forces, the chief information officers across companies are pursuing tactical buying in business units for departmental and workgroup analysis, as well as for personal BI.
According to Gartner, in the near term, the growth in the BI software segment will be affected by the slowdown experienced in sales cycles of multimillion-dollar end-to-end BI deals. Though BI and analytics is a mature market, there is a lot of unmet demand in the industry. A lot of companies have different areas like human resources and marketing which are yet to take to BI and analytics.
So far, the descriptive analytics have largely been completed for big companies in traditional subject areas like finance and sales. However, BI and analytics have huge potential in areas like diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive deployments. With many mid-sized enterprises yet to start their BI and analytic initiatives, Gartner expects the market for BI and analytics platforms to remain one of the fastest-growing software markets.
