Worldwide business intelligence (BI) platform, analytic applications and performance management (PM) software revenue surpassed $9.3 billion in 2009, a 4.2 percent increase from 2008 revenue of $8.9 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.

“Even though growth was nowhere near the levels of 2008, and by no means immune to the recession, BI showed that it is not as cyclical as many other software areas, recording healthy growth in one of the toughest years recorded in software history,” said Dan Sommer, senior research analyst at Gartner. “The dominant vendors continued to put BI, analytics and PM front and center of their messaging. Organizations largely continued their BI projects, hoping that resulting transparency and insight would enable cost-cuts and improved productivity and agility. However, there is no doubt pressure has intensified on deal sizes and price points on new sales throughout the year.”

The top five vendors continued to make up most of the market with 71 percent market share. “The large vendors held their own. As IT is consolidating, BI spending often went  to a few strategic vendors. However, the application-centric vendors didn’t have the same up-selling momentum as they did in 2008,” said Mr. Sommer.

SAP was the No. 1 vendor in combined worldwide BI, analytics and PM software revenue in 2009, accounting for 22 percent of the market, followed by Oracle, SAS Institute, IBM and Microsoft. Looking at the subsegments of BI, there were different market share leaders. In BI platforms, SAP continued to maintain the lead. In the area of corporate performance management (CPM), Oracle maintained its leadership with the former Hyperion portfolio, while SAS remained the leader in analytic applications and PM. In all three areas, IBM has emerged as a strong challenger with its services-led offering, showing above market growth and strengthening its positions during 2009. Microsoft also continues to gain users by embedding BI functionality in their wider Microsoft environments.

"While IT is trying to rationalize around one or a few vendors, the market for self-service BI is wide open. All vendors, small and large, on-premises, open-source or in the cloud, are flocking to cater for this space, trying to co-exist with the enterprise standard" said Mr. Sommer. "We see more buying from line-of-business, as dashboards and data discovery tools with in-memory analytics and ease-of-use visualization has made it an attractive and fastvalue proposition to bypass IT. The vendors in this segment, together with the open-source crowd, continue to be the fastest growers in the BI market."

SOURCE: Worldwide BI, Analytics and Performance Management Software Market Grew 4 Percent in 2009 According to Gartner, Inc.