Business Intelligence top priority of CIOs in APAC

In Gartner’s Executive Programs survey of 1500 chief information officers (CIOs), Business Intelligence has ranked as the top technology priority for the third year in a row. Gartner claimed the emphasis on this sector stems from an emerging viewpoint that in order to accomplish other business goals, such as customer service improvement and legacy application modernisation, organisations need to implement an effective BI strategy.

Analysts asserted that the market for BI software would remain healthy; however it is simultaneously facing radical change as acquisitions, new delivery models such as software-as-a-service and emerging social software tools are accelerating innovation. It is also predicted that revenue for BI software vendors in Asia Pacific is expected to surpass 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.

Gartner cited “Greenfield” opportunities, together with fast economic and structural developments as key drivers of growth in APAC. Conversely, worldwide growth rates are slowing down, predicted to reach US$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, senior research analyst, Gartner. “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.”

2007 witnessed a number of acquisitions of BI companies by large corporations including Oracle, SAP and IBM. This trend is causing the market to be dominated by mega-vendors, claimed Gartner, who represent more than two-thirds of the current BI sector. Analysts also predicted that larger publicly traded BI companies may be eliminated unless they develop their market strategy to remain visible next to the powerhouse organisations. There are also advantages to consolidation in the market, said Sood.

“Consolidation activities by SAP, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft should help accelerate the value derived from BI,” he said. “Large vendors will drive increased usage, while new BI vendors will emerge, introducing innovative technology and products to demonstrate differentiation and fill the gaps in the mega-vendors product lines.”

Sood added that increased BI innovation has resulted in query, reporting and online analytical processing (OLAP) capabilities to reach parity and no longer deliver a competitive edge. For example, Microsoft has added more BI functionalities in SQL Server
2008, Office 2007 and PerformancePoint Server.

To succeed in the BI market, Gartner recommended that organisations incorporate emerging technologies such as dashboards, predictive modelling, enterprise search, social software, interactive visualisation techniques and in-memory analytics. For example, hosted BI through software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a new approach taken by Seatab and LucidEra. There are also opportunities for growth by specialising by industry or geographic region, analysts said.

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