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For the third year in a row, business intelligence (BI) applications have been ranked the top technology priority in the 2008 Gartner Executive Programs survey of 1,500 chief information officers (CIOs). According to Gartner, this is because CIOs know they must implement a BI strategy properly if they want to accomplish many other priorities, such as customer service improvement and legacy application modernization. According to Gartner, the market for BI software would remain healthy but is facing radical change as acquisitions, new delivery models like software-as-a-service and emerging social software tools are accelerating innovation in the sector. In Hong Kong, BI software revenue is forecast to reach US$31.2 million in 2008, and US$44.2 million by 2011, at a five-year CAGR of 14.5 percent. Meanwhile, revenue for BI software vendors in Asia Pacific is expected to top US$399 million in 2008 and reach US$577.6 million in 2011, with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.5 percent. "Greenfield" opportunities, together with fast economic and structural developments, are fueling higher growth in Asia Pacific countries than in Europe and North America. Worldwide growth rates are slowing, and will move into single-digits beyond $7 billion by 2011, with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6 percent. "The days of strong double-digit growth in the global business intelligence market are over, as the industry enters a state of flux following vendor consolidation, increasing maturity and price erosion," said Bhavish Sood, Gartner senior research analyst. "However, BI remains critical for businesses as it turns information into an asset for insight and decision making, especially in high-growth markets in Asia." Gartner advises end users of BI solutions from vendors that have been recently acquired to hold strategic investments until a product roadmap has been clearly presented from the vendor. While there is no doubt that the acquired core products, such as Oracle's Hyperion Essbase, Business Objects XI, or Cognos 8 will remain highly strategic and supported by extensive research and development funding, overlapping products in a vendor's portfolio may see some defocus in the mid-term. Successful pure-play BI vendors will incorporate emerging technologies in BI such as dashboards, predictive modeling, enterprise search, social software, interactive visualization techniques and in-memory analytics. Hosted BI through software-as-a-service (SaaS) is one new approach being pioneered by a cluster of vendors including Seatab and LucidEra. Vendors can also thrive by specializing by industry or geographic region. In addition, smaller organizations are becoming an important target market for BI vendors, with a large proportion being new opportunities. |
