Business intelligence growth strong despite recession

Organisations have generally continued business intelligence projects during the downturn

The business intelligence (BI) market has seen healthy growth despite the economic downturn, according to the latest figures from Gartner.

BI is one area of IT that businesses have not been prepared to push aside due to cost pressures, as has been frequently argued by analysts and demonstrated by the financial results of BI vendors.

Organisations have generally continued their BI projects, hoping that the resulting transparency will allow them to cut costs and improve productivity in a bid to remain competitive.

The Gartner figures back this argument, showing that BI and performance management software revenues passed $9.3bn (£6bn) last year, a rise of more than four per cent compared with 2008 revenues of $8.9bn (£5.8bn).

"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, a senior research analyst at Gartner.

"The dominant vendors continued to put BI, analytics and performance management front and centre of their messaging."

Sommer explained that the top five BI vendors continued to make up most of the market, with a 71 per cent share. "As IT consolidated, BI spending often went to a few strategic vendors," he said.

The number one vendor is SAP, with 22 per cent of the market, followed by Oracle and SAS Institute with 14 per cent each. IBM is fourth with 12 per cent, and Microsoft fifth with eight per cent.