Vendors proved wrong as Business Intelligence market slows

In New Zealand, spending on Business Intelligence and analytics software reached $75.3 million in 2013, a 7.5 percent increase from 2012 revenue of $70.9 million.

According to Gartner, the increase was similar to the global growth of the market, which totalled US$14.4 billion in 2013, an 8 percent increase from 2012 revenue of $13.3 billion.

The recently released report examined business intelligence (BI) and analytics software consisting of BI platforms, corporate performance management (CPM) suites, analytic applications and advanced analytics.

"There were a number of factors slowing the market in 2013," the report claims.

"First, challenging macro had an effect. No region in the world grew faster than 12 percent, which breaks the strategic assumption that many of the large vendors have held for years - that emerging markets are growing at a much faster rate.

"Secondly, confusion still reigns around how to best leverage analytics on big data. Much big data investment happened outside traditional BI in experimental silos, infrastructure and services.

"Thirdly, growth in IT-budgets is flat and IT-led traditional BI tools are over-bought. Therefore, some market share leaders targeting those constituents showed sub-market growth."

In the top spot, SAP once again had significantly higher revenue than any other vendor at $3.1 billion with 21.3 percent of the market, up 5.3 percent from 2012 (see Table 1).

Microsoft enjoyed the highest growth of the top five vendors in 2013, with revenue rising by 15.9 percent compared with 2012, to reach $1.4 billion.

In Australia on the other hand, spending on BI and analytics software reached A$526.8 million in 2013, a 9.5 percent increase from 2012 revenue of $448.6 million.