Gartner: BI revenue on the up in 2013

Latest figures show seven per cent spike this year with business intelligence market reaching $17.1bn by 2016

Business intelligence (BI) software revenue will increase seven per cent this year to $13.8bn (£8.9bn) according to number cruncher Gartner.

The market will reach $17.1bn by 2016, as CIO appetite for BI is complemented by more tactical buying for departmental and workgroup analysis and demand for data-as-a-service continues to grow.

In the near term, BI growth will be hampered by sluggish macro indicators as well as by slowing sales cycles of multimillion-dollar end-to-end BI deals.

Gartner said that compared with 2011 growth of 16 per cent, 2013 and the coming years are expected to be slower, with growth in high single digits.

Dan Sommer, principal research analyst at Gartner, said: “BI and analytics have grown to become the fourth-largest application software segment as end users continue to prioritise BI and information-centric projects and spending to improve decision making and analysis.

"As more and more information is generated, business models need reinvention, and it is increasingly clear that mastering analytics on big data will be a key driver for the next economic cycle."

Kurt Schlegel, research vice president at Gartner, said: “Although this is a mature market and has been a top CIO priority for years, there is still a lot of unmet demand. Every company has numerous subject areas — such as HR, marketing, social and so on — that have yet to even start with BI and analytics.

"The descriptive analytics have largely been completed for most large companies in traditional subject areas such as finance and sales, but there is still a lot of growth expected for diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive deployments. Since many mid-sized organisations have yet to even start their BI and analytic initiatives, we expect the market for BI and analytics platforms will remain one of the fastest-growing software markets."