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Oracle held the top spot in the business analytics software market during the first half of 2011, with 20 percent global market share and 17.9 percent semiannual year-over-year growth, according to a new study from IDC.
The research firm’s newly launched Worldwide Semiannual Business Analytics Tracker shows that Oracle’s closest competitors (SAP, IBM, SAS Institute and Microsoft) also impressed with double-digit growth during the same period. In total, 14 vendors managed to surpass $100 million in global BA revenue during the first half of 2011. Among them, Informatica, MicroStrategy, Infor and QlikTech had the strongest growth.
The Worldwide Semiannual Business Analytics Tracker covers 12 segments within the business analytics market, providing semiannual vendor share information and a five-year annual forecast across a total of 49 countries. More than 300 vendors are being tracked across the 12 BA markets.
Out of the 12 BA markets, five contributed revenue of more than $1 billion globally on a semiannual basis: end-user query, reporting and analysis (standalone and embedded); data warehouse management; financial performance and strategy management applications; CRM analytics applications; and data warehouse generation. During the first half of 2011, they represented 73 percent of the total BA market with “impressive” year-over-year growth of 13.8 percent. Individually, the top-performing markets were data warehouse management, CRM analytics and data warehouse generation.
“This cycle, we expanded our global software tracker portfolio with the introduction of business analytics market coverage,” said Wilvin Chee, associate vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Software Trackers team. “These markets are considered to be among the fastest-growing opportunities within the software industry.”
The United States was the dominant country in the BA market with a 44 percent share during 2011, and it is expected to see 8.6 percent growth expected in 2012. The Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan); Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMA); and Latin America are forecast to drive the highest growth opportunities in 2012. In these three regions, a total of 15 countries will register solid double-digit growth, the report said. From a market perspective, IDC expects five markets to perform above the market average in 2012. They are advanced analytics (standalone and embedded); data warehouse management; data warehouse generation; end-user query, reporting and analysis (standalone and embedded); and workforce analytics applications.
“After three decades, the business analytics market is finally reaching the mainstream market [with] a status as a formal management discipline,” said Dan Vesset, IDC’s program vice president of business analytics solutions. “The demand for business analytics solutions is expected to increase as the awareness of the benefits of the technology and related business practices to improve decision making and analytics processes spreads. Although the market forecast is first and foremost dependent on the overall world economy, there are few growth inhibitors in the foreseeable future.”